Bright Eagle Story a Wagon Train tale by Rielle
by Gabrielle Baer
Summary: Cooper Smith and Duke Shannon find a surprising settlement where there aren't supposed to be any white settlers. Then Coop finds even more surprises among those settlers, old friends from east Texas. And they're all in danger from raiders.
1. Chapter 1

The Bright Hawk Story a Wagon Train story by Gabrielle Caitrin Bhaer

This story is dedicated to the following very real and very special people:

Barbara T, for her constant encouragement and unflagging friendship. Thanks so very much, Pard! And, Robert Fuller for the gift of his wonderful portrayal of so many true heroes. Thank you, sir, in this case especially for giving us all a hero named 'Cooper Smith'

Disclaimers:

This work of fiction gives a decidedly alternate backstory for several of the main characters, 'assuming facts not in evidence' as you might say, as far as what was aired on Howard Christie's 'Wagon Train'. The gentle reader, encountering these differences is encouraged to accept these variants as part and parcel of an ''alternative universe'' in which these characters have kinships and histories neither stated nor disproved on the series. Thank you for your kind attention and your patience.

None of the onscreen characters from Revue/Universal's '_Wagon Train'_ belong to me. And I'm prett nigh onta busted up about that, too. Instead they all belong to the creative mind, and the estate of the late Howard Christie, and all the gifted writers, directors, producers, and actors of that classic, classy Western. Sigh. No copyright infringement or profit taking is intended by this work of fiction, so don't sue me please; the studio/company, etc attorneys have 'many, many things' better to do.

There is no canyon, escarpment or other topographical or geographical site in northern Colorado, southern Wyoming or any other physical, actual location named Los Miraboles. In fact it is the name I invented for another hacienda in another story in another fandom. I just didn't want the gentle reader to go spelunking, rock climbing, or otherwise exploring for a non existent site when there are so many incredible real ones to discover.

D) For those who are trying to keep some semblance of order, the 'present day' events in this story follow … by about a year's time, the events of 'A Tale of Two Cousins –both Coop's Tale and Jess' Tale' aka ATTC2 parts one and two.

_**Wagon Train**_** characters:**

Michael Burns as Barnaby James Tiernan West

Robert Fuller as Nathaniel Kieran Anglim Cooper 'Coop' Smith'

Frank McGrath as Charles Albert 'Charlie' Wooster

John McIntire as Liam Christopher Hale

Denny Miller as Christopher 'Duke' Shannon

Barbara Stanwyck as Kathleen Elisabeth 'Kate' Crawley

Terry Wilson as Liam 'Bill' Hawks

**Created, Invented, Original Characters:**

Judith Light as Timothea Anastasia Evangeline Reid-Riordan aka

_Mujer aguila real/Golden/Bright Eagle Woman_

A. Martinez as Joaquin Hernan Eliseo Aguilar aka_Tzsensa-Kwihnai-Bavi,_ Brother to Coyote and Eagle,

Stephen Nichols as 'Reverend Anthony Alexander Zerachiel Godsey aka Antonio Alejandro Zacarias Gutierrez

John Smith as Padraigh Micheal Sean Riordan

Julie Pinson as Miriam Rebecca 'Miri' Etherton Randolph

Jay Pickett as Elias Matthew Randolph

Taylor Sprietler as Micaela Eizabeth Miriam 'Micky' Riordan [Thea and Micheal's first born]

Molly Burnett as Eleanor Gillian Rachel 'Nell' Randolph [Miriam and Eli's dtr]

David Gregory as _Pihi Toyarohco _Heart of a Cougaraka Ramiro Tomas Vicente Aguilar

**In the Prologue and flashbacks**

Martha Madison as Timothea Anastasia Evangeline Reid, Age 13 and a half

Jacob Young as Nathaniel Kieran Anglim Cooper Smith, Age 14 and a half

Michael Welch as Jemison Stephen Wesleyan Randolph Singer, Age 13

Jacob Young as Jacob Emrys Sayre Smith 'Jess' Harper, Age 12 and a half

Kyle Brandt as Padraigh Micheal Sean Riordan, age 15 and a half

Julie Marie Berman as Gillian Mariamne 'Gilly' Reid, age 15

Jean Paul Lavoisier as Benjamin Joseph 'Benjy' Singer, age 14

Rachel Melvin as Miriam Rebecca 'Miri' Etherton, age 14

Tyler Christopher `` as Elias Matthew Randolph, age 15

Katherine Hepburn as Elisabeth Micaela 'Mrs Beth' Cooper Smith

Herbert Marshall ````as Isaiah Asher Reid

**Prologue: Nacogdoches, Texas, December, 1859**

''Timmy, c'mon! Timmy, everybody's waitin' on you!'' Sandy haired, grey-eyed Gillian Reid called out towards the just barely open door to her cousin's room. ''Coop's likely to bust in there, just any minute now! And that's only if Jemmy, Benjy, or Micheal don't beat him to it! And I don't know that I could stop any one, much less all four of 'em'!''

''Well, you'll just have to stop them, Gilly!'' Bright blonde, hazel-eyed Timothea Reid called back, peaking around the doorsill. '' We can't let those rowdy boys into our dressing room! Why, it would be an absolute, absolute scandal!''

''And besides, Gilly, you'd be locked away in your Daddy's garret, and me and Timmy, we'd be locked up in Timmy's Granddaddy's attic, till we're all blind, toothless, helpless old maids, if anybody found it out!'' dark auburn haired, dark eyed Miriam Etherton, Timmy's foster sister responded.

''Then quit your danged fool primpin' and paintin' and get on out here, Timmy! There's a dance floor all polished up an' waitin' for you an' me to step out on!'' Micheal Riordan, the tallest and oldest of the girls' suitors called out, laughing on the far side of the door Gilly and Miri were guarding.

''He's right about the polishin', but what it's waitin' for is you an' me, Timmy!'' Benjy Singer, another cousin, visiting from Raleigh, jovially insisted.

''The heck it is!'' Jemmy Singer and Cooper Smith, Benjy's brother and one of their east Texas cousins chorused, while Jemmy tried his latest model skeleton key on the locked door between them and the girls.

''That's never gonna work, fellows.'' Eli Randolph, next oldest of the boys, from Norfolk now calmly told the pair of would-be burglars, and their companions, as he joined them in the hallway.

''And just why is that?'' all four of his friends demanded.

''Mainly that's because Timmy's Granddaddy doesn't want to have to lock her away in his attic until she's toothless. He wants her to make a fine match and move out just as soon as she's turned seventeen at the latest.'' Eli explained. '' So he fixed her door so it can't be opened from the outside, not a bit.''

''And if that were so, just how would you know it?'' Micheal asked, frowning.

'' That's mainly because I wanted to ask Timmy to wear my pin, just as soon as I get it. And so I came up here, about the middle of last week, and they were working on that lock. Old Mr. Reid, Timmy's Granddaddy, was supervisin' the work, himself. And he wouldn't tell me what he had them do to it, either.''

''Why, Elias Matthew Randolph!'' Gilly exclaimed, jerking the door open. ''You should be completely, completely ashamed of yourself! That's a … danged lie and you danged well know it! You told me only a week ago that you wanted Miri to… ''

''Gilly!'' Miriam shrieked, pulling her cousin back inside the room, but not before all five boys tumbled inside, and lay there in a jumble. ''I swore you to secrecy on that very issue, not even three days ago!''

''Well, it looks to me as if not only is that particular cat out of that particular bag, but that door is now wide open, girls.'' Timmy Reid laughed, walking out of her boudoir into their mutual dressing room. '

'And so, just by telling a little white lie, Miriam's beau got what they all wanted, scandal or no scandal! But it's still not proper in the least for you to even think of peaking at us, much less conversing with us, much less joining us; while we get ready! So you five boys, for your pe Nellce, will now peaceably retreat to the foyer and wait there, quietly, patiently for us, as proper Southron beaus are supposed to do!''

''Well whoever said they were proper, or anybody's beaus, anyhow?'' twelve and a half -year-old Jess Harper, another east Texas cousin, called out from the hallway. ''And what's the matter with all y'all? Why are y' makin' all this fuss? It's just 'nother dumb ol' Christmas dance, anyhow!''

This slur on their manners, their relationships and their manly honor so outraged the quintet of suitors that they rose almost as one and proceeded to chase the younger and swifter offender down the hallway, the wide, main staircase, out through the foyer and off the verandah. Jess outran them all, except for Jemmy, whose youthful pride was largely founded in being Wake County's champion foot-racer. These two cousins tumbled and tussled in the circular drive below the dooryard, and were soon joined by their elders, every bit of dignity shucked along with their best jackets. None of them were paying any heed at all to the rainy, windy December evening, or the grass and mud stains that now marked their faces, their hands, their best trousers, vests and shirts.

This melee went on, and grew in numbers, as the housedogs, a mix of mastiffs, spaniels and setters joined in. Some of the older boys attending the party were sent to stop the fray and only found themselves rapidly recruited to it. Next, some of the younger set, including Coop's younger brother, Jefferson tried their hand at breaking it up, which only added insult to injury, in the original combatant's view. By this time more than a dozen boys were fighting, while another group egged them on; and there looked to be no end in sight.

Finally, the master of the house, old Isaiah Reid, solved the problem by standing on his verandah's front steps and firing his favorite musket into the wintry sky. That was more than enough to get the participants' attention; just as he intended it should.

''I don't mind you young gentlemen working off some of your extraneous exuberance, truly.'' the still tall, powerfully built old man noted, as the muddied 'troupe' got to their feet, blinking and grimacing. ''But I'd much prefer you not doing so where you might be trampled upon by the horses and carriages of my guests still arriving. And I'd even more prefer you not doing so where you might trample upon my carefully planned, newly planted, albeit still dormant, long awaited rose garden! Thank you, very much indeed for your kind attention. Now, be good enough to use the summer kitchen to make yourselves as presentable as is possible, once more.''

''Yes, sir!'' most of the boys answered, those who didn't have split lips or ringing in their ears.

They began tromping towards the large frame structure behind the mansion, as dejectedly as they expected Napoleon's Grande Armies must have felt. Then a soft cry from the house got Coop's attention, and he looked up and around, grinning wide as the Braxos. Up on the second floor of the Reid mansion, a 'widow's walk' had been built years back. Now solely 'Timmy' Reid, smiling and waving her handkerchief, populated it.

_She looks like a princess in a tower, certain sure. _Coop thought._ Smilin' and wavin' at the knights fightin' for her favors… She ought t' be fought for, that's somethin' else that's certain! She's a prize if ever there was one! Wish I thought she'd … Aw, why in blue blazes would she give a fig for me? Look at how many beaus she's got, a good two years before she'll 'come out'! Look at how much she's grown up with! What kinda fool would think he could ever take her away from the life old Isaiah's made sure she's always had? _

''She is gorgeous, isn't she, Cooper?'' Jemmy asked, stopping beside his cousin.

''A fella would have to be blind not to know that's so.'' Coop admitted, glumly. ''Don't figure she's waving to either of us, though, Jem. ''

''Why, what … '' Jemmy frowned and looked where Coop pointed. A yard away, Micheal Riordan stood grinning up at the lovely girl they all admired. The already tall, broad-shouldered fifteen year old was a newcomer here, born and raised in the wild territory up along the Dakotas, which fact alone won him the attention and admiration of a great many youths and girls in Nacogdoches. He'd come to stay with his mother's people, only when most of his family died in that wilderness, which also touched and impressed a lot of people. Added to that, he already had an appointment to Virginia Military Institute, an achievement Coop wasn't alone

in envying.

''Sure looks to me like Timmy's got her cap set for ol' Micheal, there.'' Jess suggested, joining his cousins in watching the pair silently communicate. '' Whyn't he just ask ol' Isaiah for her hand or whatever he asks for, an' get it done? Then it could be all settled, and all y'all could stop fussin' about Timmy, or Gilly or any of them dumb girls … an' get to fussin' about the real thing comin' down th' pike! Y'all do know we're gonna have us a all-out shootin' war for certain sure now, don't y'?''

'' Figure we did hear somethin' about that, yeah.'' Coop drawled. ''Did we, Jem?''

''Figure we might've, Cooper.'' Jemmy gave a sour laugh. '' Can't say it's anything to look forward to, though. Jess doesn't seem to get that, does he, though?''

''Hey! Don't go talkin' like I ain't standing right here!'' Jess complained. ''What in blue blazes do you think I don't get, Jemmy?''

'' You don't get a lot of things, Jess.'' the Raleigh native frowned. '' Mostly in this case, Jess, you don't' seem to get that 'a all-out shootin' war' means us fellas are really, really likely to be shootin' at some other fellas.''

''Naw, just some dumb ol' farm boys, some thick headed DamnYankees, is all!'' Jess insisted. '' They can't shoot straight, can't ride worth a dam, can't march, can't fight a bit, anyhow! The whole shootin' match'll be over in three, four months, tops, an' ever' body already knows it! C'mon, Jemmy! C'mon, Coop! Why've y' got such danged long faces on?''

''Oh, no reason, except we're still standing out here, soaked through, muddied up to our ears, cousin.'' Jemmy answered, with more of a smile. ''And you still don't get why we're not happy as clams that Timmy Reid has taken such a shine to 'ol' Micheal Riordan there'? Well, maybe in another couple of years, you'll get it, Jess… if you live that long, anyhow. I'm going in to clean up. Y'all stand out here in the rain all you want. Just don't yelp about the mustard plasters you have to have put on, when you catch your near-death of cold!''

''Yes, Doc Singer!'' the east Texas cousins chorused, and then ran ahead of Jemmy towards the Reid House' summer kitchen. They'd been razzing their cousin from North Carolina for more than a year now, on every occasion that offered, about his penchant for reading every medical tome and journal he could get his hands on. Jemmy took their teasing in stride, knowing his course already set … or at the least, well and firmly planned for. Now, determined not to lose his other claim to distinction, the Raleigh-born and raised cousin raced ahead of the pair of Texans and handily beat them to reach the white frame structure and the rest of their friends.

'' We're just friends, silly!'' Timmy Reid insisted, as Cooper Smith finally managed to 'buttonhole' her at the dance, several hours later. '' I don't know why on earth you would think anything more serious was goin' on! Micheal's a nice boy, surely. But I …''

''You haven't made any promises to him?'' Coop asked, feeling more hopeful than he wanted the lovely girl beside him to know.

''Well, for heaven's sake, of course I haven't! I'm only thirteen and three quarter's years old! This isn't the Dark Ages, after all, Cooper. This is eighteen fifty-nine! Now, please, can't we just sit and talk in a friendly fashion, as we always have done? Or if we can't do that, can we go back and dance some more?'' Timmy asked, shaking her head and smiling at him, her wide, bright eyes full of fun, as always.

'' Surely, surely, I suppose so. We can talk. Figure I just… Micheal's a fine fellow… truly. He's fine… And … reckon I just wanted to … Timmy, with all this war-talk…'' Coop started and stopped. He didn't wholly understand why some things seemed abruptly so important to him. They just did. And he needed very badly to know if they seemed that way to this lively, happy, extraordinary girl.

''Oh, pooh! I don't wish to hear anything more of that! I simply won't hear anything more about politics, Yankees, secession, fire-eaters or war! This is still the Christmas season! We are still at peace, now, aren't we? Why, not even the entire South has seceded, yet! Jemmy was just reminding me that North Carolina has yet to vote on the question. He seems rather put out on that basis, too. But I made Jemmy, Eli and Micheal all promise me, and I'll have your promise, too, Cooper Smith. No more of these dreadfully depressing topics!'' Timmy exclaimed. ''Well, are you going to give me your word, Sir, or shall I have to banish you from my kingdom?''

''Oh, no, please, Queen… that is, I mean, Empress… that is, Your Royal … ness, Timmy, I swear I won't breathe a word about … anything you … dislike, not a word, not a syllable, honest!'' Coop readily promised her

''Your Serene Highness will do quite nicely, thank you, Sir Knight.'' Timmy laughed, and the sound was all warmth and light that seemed to weave a wall around them both for a moment. ''You may now accompany me on my return to the punch bowl, and the confectionery. I simply must deduce the recipe of those tea-cookies! And then, if you continue to behave as a true Southron gentleman…''

'' … If I behave… what?'' Coop asked, swallowing on a mixture of wild hopes and wilder panic.

''Then you may have the honor of my next dance, Sir Knight. But you may not make another attempt to so monopolize me. A reigning monarch must be seen to be entirely equitable with her devoted subjects… all her devoted subjects… '' Timmy giggled, and dropped her 'royal' manner for something more like the schoolgirl she was.

''At least until she chooses her favorite?'' Coop somehow found the nerve to suggest.

''That's exactly right. At some point, a reigning queen or empress must choose and bind herself in marriage to the proper Prince-Consort. It's no more than her people, or her granddaddy, expect of her. You understand. You do understand, don't you, Cooper?'' the girl asked and fixed her wide, shining eyes on his face.

'' I think so. I hope… I hope it wouldn't be … it wouldn't be a capital offense, Your Serene Highness… if I … '' Coop didn't know what he was going to ask, or do, until Timmy turned back to look him directly in the eye. Then he couldn't seem to keep from sliding off his chair, pulling her close and kissing her soft, sweet lips. Before he knew it, his hands were dropping away from her perfect, heart-shaped face; and he didn't know they'd been there, caressing it while he pressed his mouth to hers. Timmy was staring up at him, her eyes wide and intent on his face; not seeming afraid, or worse, aghast, but just startled, just surprised, a bit.

''Ah G-d! 'M sorry! Timmy! I'm … I shouldn't've done that! '' Coop exclaimed, feeling his face grow hot.

''No, you really shouldn't've done!'' Timmy giggled and blushed and then shocked Coop speechless by winking, grinning and kissing him back. ''And I shouldn't have done that, either! And I will fervently deny I did, or that I ever said this: But the truth is, I like kissing boys. Oh… that was very wicked of me to say, now, wasn't it? Probably more wicked than the whole, entire kissing part, altogether! Promise me you'll never breathe a word of my awful iniquity to anyone, ever, please, Cooper, dear?''

_If she'd just go on callin' me 'Cooper, dear', I'd do anything she asked me, ever! _Coop thought, even while he felt sure a particularly mindless grin was spreading across his face.

''Well, Cooper, aren't you going to promise?'' Timmy demanded.

'' I promise!'' Coop finally managed to tell her. ''Oh, I swear, Timmy, I won't say a word to anyone, ever!''

''Oh, dear! Boys are so melodramatic! Why is that, I wonder? A simple promise from friend to friend is all I require. But thank you, I do appreciate your … enthusiasm.'' Timmy grinned again, looking far more like the schoolgirl she still was than she had a moment past.

''Boys are … Timmy… You haven't been… kissin' a lot of boys… have you?''

'' I don't' see how that could possibly be any of your business, Sir. I am not as yet promised, betrothed or married, am I? And if I were any of those things, I would still be a free woman! I would adamantly insist on that, in fact!'' the girl asked, clearly joking with him, now.

''Well, course you're not! Of course you would… I … reckon… But I … we … Timmy, 'm sorry if this … is somethin' else you don't want to hear… And 'm sorry if… I didn't … '' Coop started and stopped and started over… feeling he'd burst if he didn't get the words out.

Timmy laughed aloud, musically and caught Coop's right hand in both of hers, maybe to stop him waving it about, he thought. ''Cooper Smith! You are a darling, really! And I don't know why I hadn't noticed this, just lately. But what Gilly and Miriam told me … it's absolutely true!''

'' Wh-what'd th-they tell you? Wh-what's true?'' Coop demanded, hating the stammer that was tripping him up, no matter how he fought it.

''You talk just exactly like your dear, charming old Daddy!'' Timmy answered. ''You stammer and start and stop halfway through… It's just adorable, truly.''

Normally Coop didn't mind any comparisons drawn between him and his father, Daniel Smith, universally called 'Danny'. The older Smith was admired, honored and loved throughout east Texas and back east all the way to his boyhood home in Tennessee. But the likeness of speech Timmy pointed out now was a trait neither father nor son much liked in themselves.

'' If you say so, Your Serenity.'' Coop muttered.

''My Serene Highness, silly!'' Timmy laughed, and he somehow loved and hated the sound, both at once.

''Silly, yeah, that's pretty much the way I feel right now, certain sure.'' Coop frowned, intently studying his boot tips so as not to show Timmy, or anyone how he felt just now, which was a lot worse than 'silly'.

''Oh, dear, now I have hurt your feelings, haven't I?'' Timmy asked. ''And that was very cruel, and very childish of me. I do beg your pardon. I truly must stop being such an … infant! Granddaddy says so, all the time. He says, being his own heir… and having so much responsibility ahead of me, I truly must learn to be more considerate, and more mature. And I've been thinking about that, quite a bit this winter; especially after Granddaddy got so very sick, earlier on, last month

. So, I'm going to try my best, and I've decided I'm going to start by using my given name; which I think I do like, after all. I will ask all my friends and kin to start calling me Timothea… yes. That will show Granddaddy and … well, just everyone how serious I take such things, now. And I'm going to be much better behaved and kinder to my friends, and absolutely, absolutely loyal to my family and friends, too. Granddaddy says one's never too young to be kind, to be genteel, and to be a good and loyal friend. And we've always been friends, Cooper, you and I; so I surely hope my wayward behavior this evening hasn't … changed that. It hasn't, Cooper, has it?''

Coop shook his head, thinking he'd be better off not saying anything more than he had. But then, Timmy startled him again, looking all innocence again, and holding out her hand as if she expected him to shake it, the way he would another boy's! Now he knew he had to say his piece, even if this changeable as the whirlwind girl beside him didn't like what she heard. She was the most beautiful, most fascinating living creature he'd ever known or even heard of.

And she was sitting here, looking at him, fondly, so it seemed, with her wide, bright hazel eyes looking almost golden in the light from the chandelier far above their heads. Her light brown hair was piled at the back of her head in some way that only made it gleam all the more, and her heart shaped face was glowing. She could be a fairy, a Serene Highness or an angel, or all three, as far as he knew. Only she was real, warm and alive; and she hadn't pulled her hand away when he took it in his own, as charily as if it, and its owner were made of porcelain.

'' No, Timm… No, it hasn't, Timothea… '' He started over, trying the formal sounding name on his tongue.'' That's not what changed… I have… I've changed. And I need to tell you how… I need you to hear me out, please!''

'' Well, surely.'' the girl nodded, peering at him; as if she could find the change he spoke of, written on his face. ''Surely, Cooper.''

'' Timothea… '' Coop started again.

'' Why don't you just call me Thea, its shorter and prettier, I think?'' she asked, interrupting him again.

'' Thea… Yeah, I … I like that. Thea, your Granddaddy's right. It's never too soon to be kind and good, loyal to your friends and … truthful with them. So, that's what I'm gonna be w-with you, right now. And it may sound real silly… to you… But I'm gonna be fifteen, come summer, and you're gonna be fourteen in February. '' Coop said and dropped his eyes back down to where she was still letting him hold her hand, before he went on.

'' And like it or not, it's certain sure we're gonna have to grow up awfully fast… because it's certain sure, there is gonna be a war… And so I … I just have to tell you…You're so fine and lovely and sweet… Thea… You're the most wonderful gir… young woman I know, or ever hope to. And I … I honor … and I cherish… and I love you, dearly, Thea… And if I had anything … I'd give you anything … I'd give you just everything, if that would … show you I'm only tellin' you th' G-d's honest truth. And if you hate hearin' that… 'M sorry… I am. And if you love somebody else, I won't be th' least bit surprised. And I won't … say another word about this, ever. But it's still nothin' but true.''

Timmy said nothing at all for such a long time after he stopped talking that Coop began to worry he'd either made her furious or made her swoon. But then she did something that surprised him again and at the same time told him everything he needed to know. As gently as if he were made of bone china, Timmy put her other hand under Coop's chin and exerted just enough pressure to bring his eyes back up to meet her own.

Studying her eyes, Coop saw all he needed to see, as they brimmed with tears. And Timmy knew what he saw there, and nodded.

'' You are the sweetest, most caring, … bo… young man I know, Cooper Smith. I'm honored, tremendously honored and flattered by what you told me, honestly. And I'm not promised, betrothed or engaged… that was absolutely the truth. But I am … I am in love. And I've treated you shamefully this evening. I am the one who should profoundly beg your pardon. And so I do! Will you, will you ever, ever forgive my rash behavior?'' Timmy asked him.

''Figure I acted just as … wild. I … kissed you, first, Thea.'' Coop nodded, still unable to be angry with her, even though his insides felt near stove-in, just now. ''So, we'll just call it that th' one cancelled out th' other. What'd you say?''

'' And you're not even asking who I'm in love with?'' the girl demanded, seeming almost unhappy with his lack of inquisitiveness.

'' Well it's Micheal, Micheal Riordan, ain't it?'' Coop asked in turn, barely managing a halfhearted shrug. '' You're in love with him, aren't you, Thea. But you're not promised… so … figure Micheal must be th' only one in th' whole, entire Nacogdoches County that don't know about it yet.''

Now Timmy stared at Coop for another long moment and he thought any minute she'd slap him as hard as she could for putting the matter that bluntly. But the girl, the woman was still full of surprises and proved it by starting to laugh as merrily as ever.

''He surely doesn't seem to!'' she agreed, when she could catch her breath again. 'Maybe Micheal thinks I'm still too young to know my mind! I know I've had quite a time getting Granddaddy to see I'm no such thing! And I can't see what anybody's mind has got to do with such things, anyhow!''

Then her mood shifted again and she seemed about to weep. '' But, Cooper, I'm … I am so sorry to have hurt you. And yet I had to be as truthful as you were with me, didn't I? Wouldn't it have been even worse to lie about such things? Surely it would be a terrible wrong, a sin, to lie about who one loves? Oh, dear! I feel so awful, now! You wouldn't want me to fib… to play some awful, cruel, childish games with you?''

''No, no, course not!'' Coop hurried to reassure her, gently squeezing the hand she still hadn't withdrawn from his. '' You can't… keep from lovin' … or make yourself… love… or …make somebody love you, Thea. That'd be the wrongest kind of thing …especially … between friends. And you were right; we've always been friends. And we always will be. Always. Don't you forget that, Thea. Don't you ever forget that.''

''I won't. I promise.'' Timmy Reid smiled brightly at him, and the warmth of her smile, the shining light of her eyes seemed almost to set his world back the way Cooper Smith figured it had been, a very long quarter of an hour ago.


	2. Chapter 2

SCENE ONE: somewhere in northern Colorado/southern Wyoming territories

''You're getting pricklier by the day, my friend.'' Duke Shannon told Cooper Smith, when they finally stopped to rest their mounts.

" In fact, you've been touchy as a broody mare, for the past fortnight and a little more. In fact, if I didn't know better, I would swear you have something like the same problems I expect from a broody mare. But since that's impossible, I want to know just what your problem is, Coop, and I mean right this minute, now.''

''My problem right this minute now, Duke? That's simple; I'm getting dressed down." Coop growled in return. ''Only, I don't have the least idea why that is. Why is that, Mister Shannon?"

_Uh-oh!_ Duke thought. _Whenever Coop pulls his mouth taut that way and calls me 'Mister Shannon', I know I'm in for it. But I'm not going to take that bait and lose my Irish temper, too. And I can't let this go. _

'' Maybe because I haven't been able to get a word out of you in private, not one word beyond '' mornin'' or ''evenin'' in the length of time I just mentioned, either." Duke answered bluntly. "So c'mon. I know I'm not Chris Hale. Heck, I wouldn't want to be! He's got the whole train to worry about, all the time. But while we're both out here looking for that old southern trail, I've only got you.

And it doesn't make my job very easy, and it doesn't make any sense to me…"

"Maybe that's because it's none of your danged business to begin with." Coop offered, along with a glare. "Maybe there are things goin' on in my head you don't need nor want to know! Did you ever think of that? Maybe there's a whole danged war goin' on between my ears that's got nothin' at all to do with you. Did that ever occur to you at all? No, of course not, you're just as nosy and just as much a busybody and a snoop as old Charlie Wooster! The only thing that makes you more tolerable is that you make potable coffee and you don't speak some whole, entire different kind of English from everybody else!"

_Now he's just trying to distract me. _Duke considered._ But I've been taking notes from Chris Hale lately and I think Coop just let something slip that is part of his danged 'broody mare' problem. _

"So, then it's the War that's on your mind these days, Coop? It's the way you feel about what happened to your brother and what happened with Sandra and little Paula and all that that's eating you? I thought you were starting to get past all that, after …"

'' After I let that Cummings woman and her daughter know what I was trying to do to them …What I was after them for, and why?'' Coop frowned, shaking his head. '' Reckon I did, as much as I ever will. No, that's not it Duke. Nothing I can do can bring Jeffy back, ever… Figure I should've learned that a long time ago… What's past is past… right? We should be able to … just leave it behind and get on with what's here and now, shouldn't we?''

'' And that's the hardest thing we ever have to do.'' Duke nodded. '' Something else from the past, from your past then, is that what's bothering you these days, Coop?''

Now the east Texan turned to stare at the looking angry at first and then, even as Duke watched, frankly amazed. "How long have you been practicing up actin' like Chris Hale, anyway? And what makes you think I'd answer him if he asked me that?" Coop demanded, but with half a grin on his face.

Duke laughed heartily at that. "Well, I have known Chris a few years longer than you have, buddy." the fair haired scout replied. "But I've known you for a while now, too."

''So, what you're sayin' is I'm not that hard to read, these days? Dang it! I'd better get back to work on that! I'm not goin' around all transparent, am I?'' Coop demanded, with a whole, albeit crooked grin.

''No, not exactly. I figure it's the way you tend to hunch in your shoulders, quiet down even more, and guard your gut and mutter to yourself when somethin's eatin' you, is all." Duke offered. "When there's a whole train full of people around a fellow might not take notice as much. But when there's not, it's just …easier to pick up the signs."

"Yeah, figure that." Coop agreed. "Like the difference between the main road into a farmer's market or a mill and a track up into the hills."

"Yeah, like that. So what's the problem?" Duke asked, pulling his canteen down to take a careful couple of swallows.

"Would you believe me, Duke, if I said I don't really know?" Coop asked, without looking at his friend this time. "Cause I don't. I've just had a feeling for a little while lately that … something's going out of kilter. Something's comin' my way that I don't … that I won't know how to handle… And a fellow should know how to handle whatever comes at him, right?"

"I'm not sure I'd agree with that. Everybody gets thrown for a loop sometime. But if I was to start acting like our friend Chris Hale , I guess I'd say you could be having one of his famous premonitions which would be really bad news; since they're always right and they're always trouble for someone, and usually for us. Or you could be making a mountain out of a molehill that's too far away to even see, yet, Coop." Duke replied.

"Duke, you really gotta stop that now, you're startin' to scare me." Coop laughed.

"Stop what? Giving good advice to my friends?"

"Nope. Stop scrunching up your face and pulling down your shoulders and sounding so much like Chris it's like we never rode away from the train at all!" Coop joked.

"Well who do you want me to act like, you young lally-ganger, you danged fool don't know-what-for, you darned young coffee-complainter… you… " Duke asked, slipping into Wooster-isms until he couldn't keep a straight face himself.

"Never mind, never mind! Let's get back on the trail!" Coop chortled. And so they did, riding south from the main California trail to find a pass near a canyon named Los Miraboles.

"There it is. Just like those old trapper's stories had it," Duke noted, after taking one long drink from his canteen. "six miles south of Los Miraboles canyon. Figure those old timers had to keep a good recollection of places, just to keep from getting turned around out here in the middle of nowhere."

"Figure you're right, for once." Coop answered, grinning at the younger man, after sipping some water in his turn. Sliding out of the saddle, the dark haired scout damped down his kerchief and rubbed it across Gambler's eager mouth. The golden-sorrel stallion wanted more, but Coop knew they had to hold back, until they reached another source of potable water. Duke did the same for his liver-chestnut a tough but willing gelding named Indian Paintbrush, but more often simply called 'Injun'. A well-broken trail riding horse big enough for the fair haired younger scout wasn't that easy to find, not one that wasn't more accustomed to pulling Conestogas or stage coaches. So Shannon took great pride in 'Injun' and great care to keep the big fellow healthy.

As he shifted his long frame back into the saddle, Duke looked up and down the long escarpment that marked out the pass itself. Then he let out a surprised yelp, sounding a whole lot more like young Barnaby West for a moment.

"What's the matter now?" Coop laughed, as he mounted Gambler. "Did you forget to check for burrs under Injun's saddle? Not that anything with burrs on it could grow in this danged alkali, anyhow.

"Over there, Coop, look!" Duke gestured, still staring at what looked like the proverbial pillar of cloud rising southeast of the escarpment. "It looks like there's some place on fire right over there. But it can't be. No settlements are allowed in this part of the territory, not according to that latest treaty."

"We're still a good distance away." Coop argued. "So maybe it's only a dust storm, which would be bad enough if it heads our way. Or maybe we're out of heads and seein' some kinda mirage. Because you're right again, Duke, and it's gettin' pretty annoying. There's no one crazed enough to live in these badlands but scorpions, buzzards, fire-ants, desert rats, a few coyotes, and maybe some really ornery Comanches . But there's no settlements anywhere near here at all, none I ever heard …"

Smith's blue-sky eyes widened in shock as Duke looked on amazed. But the older scout only sat and stared at the column of smoke. Nothing surprised Cooper Smith as far as Shannon had ever heard, nothing at all. The black-haired Texan had lived and worked hard all his life, so far as Duke knew, leaving what little surviving family he had back in east Texas, after the War. Displaced and discontented like many others their age, a wandering way of life in a new country seemed better than trying to rebuild what was forever lost, 'down to home'. Only when purposeless drifting no longer suited did men like Cooper Smith come looking for a new place to belong. And that he was making for himself readily these days, on the Hale train.

But now Coop's ruddy features were pale as new milk and his eyes the cold dark grey of a hillside buried in shale.

"Hey buddy, Hey, Coop, what's the matter?" Duke demanded, first grabbing Gambler's reins and then Coop's right arm to keep him in the sorrel's saddle.

"Los Miraboles Canyon. Los Miraboles… That's what my gut was tryin' to tell me…That's why I kept wondering if taking this trail was such a great idea, after all! " Coop finally muttered. "I listened to those old timers and I listened hard, especially after we found out they could barely sketch out a map to that pass. But the name of the danged place went in one ear and … There never has been a settlement in these parts. Not one. But there have been settlers, right enough, the danged fools! The danged hard-headed fool, I mean cause it only takes one! But he wanted, no he was determined to build his very own castle out here! His very own castle!"

"Coop, take it easy a minute, will you? Who in the devil are you talking about? You know someone who settled out here, a few thousand miles from nowhere?" Duke asked.

" Only the dangdest fool I ever knew in my whole, entire life that's all! And that's includin' me!" Coop replied, frowning in the direction of the rising smoke. " He's Micheal Riordan from down in Nacogdoches, where we grew up! And he went a little wild durin' and after th' War. Well, a whole lot of us did that and more besides, sowin' our wild oats. But Mickey swore he'd take his family as far away from carpetbaggers, scallywags and all the damYankees in the world as he possibly could. And he already had a name for the danged place, that he got off some old map of this territory, right here. Los Miraboles. And if Micheal's still there then … Thea's still there, too and their kids, and likely some more of our old east Texas friends. And unless something's changed, there aren't enough of them to even call it a settlement, barely enough to take care of one homestead, in fact."

"But there are a lot of Indians in these parts, Indians who know how those treaties are worded and how they're broken better than any white man." Duke nodded. "A fight over even badlands like these could start up another all-out Indian war!"

"Hope t' G-d I'm wrong, then. But it looks to me, Duke as though a war's already got started! Well, are you comin' with me now to find out, and help out? Or are you headin' back to the train?" Coop demanded to know, as he turned Gambler's head towards the thick grey column on the side of the escarpment, no more than five miles away.

Just then the clatter of distant rifle fire sounded from the same direction as all that smoke, and Duke made up his mind. _Chris Hale will skin me alive if I don't report back on this pass we need to use now. It's too late in the season, after all the stops we had to make because of that danged trail fever, to try the northern routes. We end up hub-deep in snow that way! _Duke considered.

_But Chris would skin me alive and then find some way to do it all over again if I leave Coop to face whatever this is on his lonesome. Our friend the wagonmaster just won't stand for leaving folks behind. And he has plenty of reasons for it. _

"I'm coming with you, Buddy." Duke announced. "I don't like the odds very much with two of us against we don't know how many, but I like 'em even less with only one of us heading in there. Let's ride!"

Coop grinned tautly, glad for the younger man's company and glad for his skill with a rifle, a revolver or a hunting knife as needed, too.

"You got it, partner." Coop agreed and slapped reins against Gambler's neck but lightly. The big sorrel never needed more than a nudge to do as his rider asked. "Let's ride."


	3. Chapter 3

SCENE TWO Los Miraboles Canyon area northern Colorado territory,

" _Mi jefe, dos jinetes estan viniendo esta manera_!" one of the lookouts, posted at the nearest point east of their defenses called out.

"_Solamente dos_?" the leader of the band asked, his attention still on the fire damage to the compound."Only two riders, Emmanuelo?"

"_Si, jefe, _Dario saw them just a moment ago._ " _The lookout answered.

"And Dario has the longest eyes in the_ compania_." the man addressed as chief nodded. Among his mother's people from Sonora province in Mexico and before that, from San Antonio de Bejar in old Texas, he was known as Joaquin Her Nell Eliseo Aguilar. Tall, broad shouldered, but wiry and graceful as a cougar, he was in his prime now at the ripe old age of 27. His wide dark eyes took in every detail around him, and had always been the key to his survival thus far in a harsh world that kept growing harsher and more bitter.

His aquiline features handsomely displayed his _Mejicano _origins, knife sharp and full of his native intelligence, his coloring and way

of living and beliefs spoke more to his father's people, the Comanche bands of north eastern Colorado and western Kansas, descendants and near cousins of the Shoshoni. Among them he was known as _Tzsensa-Kwihnai-Bavi,_ Brother to Coyote and Eagle, because of the strong medicine he seemed to carry with him like a good luck charm, and the wit and boldness with which he led and protected his own.

"Go out to Dario's post and send him back to me immediatamente, Manuelo." The leader ordered now. "I want to hear from him all that he saw. And keep your head down, _por favor, mi compadre._ These two may be only the vanguard for another attack by the white-eyes."

"_Si, mi jefe."_ Manuelo answered, touching the brim of his sombrero.

"Bavi," a woman's deep, clear, tremulous voice called out from the shelter of the stables they'd been able to save from the fire. "Bavi,"

"I'm coming, _mi_ _querida."_ Aguilar/Tzsensa answered, and turned back, sorrow filling his wide eyes as she continued to call out, over and over again.


	4. Chapter 4

SCENE THREE somewhere in northern Colorado/southern Wyoming territories

Duke Shannon was used to outrunning and out racing just about anyone, either on foot or mounted. But since his first meet up with Cooper Smith, the long legged fair-haired scout had far too often found himself chasing, and what was worse, swallowing Coop's dust! And now that was happening again! Coop and Gambler when they got a good head of steam up were like one creature, instead of two and faster than they had any right to be, into the bargain.

"Will you hold up!" Duke shouted, as he finally reached the older scout and pulled 'Injun' to a stop just ahead of his companion. "You don't know what or who we're gonna find over there, Coop! You don't know if it's your friends from Texas or some other batch of dang fools who shouldn't even be out here. And you don't know who did that shooting, much less how many armed men could be just waiting for us right now on the other side of that escarpment. So maybe, just maybe you shouldn't be riding in there hell-bent for leather."

Coop frowned so darkly at Shannon that for a moment the younger man wondered what the Texan was seeing. But whatever it was, was gone in the next instant and the older scout pulled up and stopped beside Duke. Then Coop visibly pushed his shoulders down and back, forcing a pseudo-relaxed posture, wiped the dust his ride had kicked up off his face and shook his head.

"It's just a real strong feelin' I have, Duke. A real bad, gut feeling. As soon as I saw that plateau next to the pass …. all I could think about was Mickey Riordan and the others and … and Thea… in some kinda trouble."

"And especially this … Thea?" Duke asked, knowing full well he might have to dodge the Texan's temper for prodding that way. "But she's this Riordan's wife, isn't that what you were saying, Coop? They're married, right?"

"They're married." Coop grimaced as if his friend had just pulled a splinter from his finger, only moreso, Duke thought.

"They got married before we all left Texas to go off to the shootin' War. And Mickey Riordan, he pretty much worships the ground Thea walks on… Always has done… And Thea was … she was like a fairy princess in a tower, somewhere. Thea was silly and smart and confusing as all get out when she wanted to be… and downright gorgeous. She's got one of those just about perfect faces… no sharp angles, nothing, just nothing wrong about it… And she's got this light sunshine yellow hair fallin' around her face in little curls, like a picture frame and big, dark hazel eyes… A fellow could get completely, completely lost in those eyes of hers."

"So Mickey Riordan wasn't the only one who … cared for Thea?" Duke guessed.

"Not even close. I never saw even one fella Timmy Reid couldn't and didn't charm right out of his … good sense, one time or another." Coop muttered.

"Whoa, hold on a minute. Who's Timmy Reid? Who are you talkin' about, Buddy?" Shannon asked, feeling like his head just got turned in the other direction, without the rest of him following.

"Timothea Anastasia Evangeline Reid." Smith answered, while suddenly making a fervent study of his dust coated boot tips.

"We all called her Timmy, leastways while we were growin' up together in east Texas. But when she started to have serious beaus come a-courting, all of a sudden Timmy decided she wanted to be called Thea. And when she chose Mickey Riordan to marry, Thea… Well she broke hearts from Nacogdoches all the way east to Raleigh and N'folk, Viriginia! Guess you already got it pretty well figured that one of those hearts was mine, don't ya?"

"Guess I do. But you were … " Duke started to offer something he thought might help Coop clear his head before they rode into a likely fire-fight.

" We were just kids, back then? Is that what you were about to tell me, partner?" Coop asked, his eyes dark again and a bitter edge back in his gravely voice. "Sure, we were just a batch of dumb kids back then! Well tell me something: Is that the way _you_ felt about the girls you left behind to go off and 'see th' Elephant', when the War came? That it didn't matter a dang, that you were all just fool kids makin' eyes at each other, but afraid to go so far as sparkin', back then? Is that truly the way you felt, when you went off to fight with the … with the whichever Indiana Volunteers you signed on with?"

"Eighth Indiana Volunteer Cavalry." Duke replied. "And no. I didn't feel much like a kid back then. I felt like it was either the beginning or the end of the world coming down on us, on all of us. And it was… wasn't it, Coop?"

"One more you got right, today, Youngster." Coop noted, with a taut half smile. "And I have t' say it's getting plumb annoyin'. Now enough ancient history. There's a fire goin over there, a big one, judgin' by all that smoke. And we didn't exactly ride down here through any lightning, now did we? So somebody likely set fire to whatever's there. And I think we should go take a look, cause I still have a strong feelin' there's some people in bad trouble, _even_ if its nobody we ever saw before. And I have a very strong feelin' that Chris Hale would do the same, exact thing. Now, do you want to disagree with that, Mr. Shannon?"

"Not one bit, Mr. Smith." Duke chuckled, turning Injun's head towards the plumes of smoke. "Not even one. After you, Mr. Smith, no, on second thought, _after me_. I got all I want just now of eating your dust, thanks very much!"

"Then keep up, Youngster!" Coop insisted, with more like his usual crooked smile.

Glad to see Coop's dry wit make a comeback, Duke slapped reins and did just that as each scout urged his horse to a faster gait and a greater effort. Willing and agile as ever, Gambler and Injun took the lead they were given and fairly flew across the alkali and sagebrush towards the escarpment south of Los Miraboles canyon. Within half an hour both young men were pulling up sharply and dismounting again. Each of their horses had to be gentled, and kept quiet, coming this close to what looked to be a dying fire. Leading Gambler and Injun to the shelter of a strong stand of pinyon pine and sagebrush, the scouts ground tied their horses and gave them both another taste of water.

A few yards away, the flames were dying out, showing a long, low _hacienda _in the smoking ruins. But there was no sign of life to be seen or heard within what remained of its adobe walls. _If it weren't for the fire,_ Duke thought, _you'd think nobody had lived here in a hundred years, or more. _

"Easy there, big fella." Coop said, helping Duke get a handle on Injun, who showed himself more nervous under these conditions than Gambler. "Take it easy there, Injun. You and your partner are stayin' right here safe and sound, till we need you. And if that is some sort of settlement over yonder we'll surely find you both some grain and maybe even some dried apples for your supper. Not to mention whoever the danged fools are there, they have to have found a decent well or underground spring or they couldn't stay put here. Anyhow, that's how I've got it figured."

"Injun didn't go through the War with me, the way Gambler did with you, Coop. That's probably why he's jumpier, right now." Duke offered quietly, admiring Coop's calm skill and sheer patience with the gelding.

"What?" Coop asked, just as quietly. "You don't think for a minute I'd take Gambler into a shootin' War with a lot of Yankee farm boys who could hardly shoot straight, do ya? Texans have more care for their horses than that, Youngster. And Gambler here was a gift to me from my grandfather! Surely thought you'd have learned that much by this time. Nope, ol' Gambler here stayed down to home 'safe as houses', like my Grandpa Nate used to call it. And whenever raiders did come through, folks around those parts knew how to hide what they needed most, like decent horses and so forth. Like I say, Texans know what's impor…"

A rifle's crack and a bullet's whining passage close by cut Coop off, as both scouts dived for cover in the brush. Two more shots came all too close for comfort even there. And finally a clear voice with a strong Mexican accent called out.

" Our lookouts saw you riding this way more than an hour ago, _Yanquis._ So you may as well come out of that brush and show yourselves like honest men would, unless you want us to believe you are thieves come to steal what little we have here. And that would not be wise. So, stand up like _hombres, _throw out your weapons,and come out to meet us, _senores. Ahora._ _Now, gentlemen_." The speaker demanded.

Coop and Duke exchanged one look and shrugged at each other. Duke said nothing as he threw his rifle in the general direction of the man talking to them. Coop had only one word on his mind and he spat it out as if it tasted bad, while he complied with the man giving the orders.

"Comancheros." But all Coop was thinking was _My G-d! Where's Thea? What's happened to Thea? _


	5. Chapter 5

SCENE FOUR FLASHBACK: Nacogdoches, Texas, November, 1860

"Psalm 67: " Isaiah Asher Reid intoned, standing up proud and tall as ever before his congregation.

"May God be merciful unto us and bless us; and cause his face to shine up us; Selah. That thy way may be known upon earth, thy saving health among all nations. Let the people praise thee, O G-d; let all the people praise thee. O let the nations be glad and sing for joy: for thou shalt judge the people righteously, and govern the nations upon earth. Selah. Let the people praise thee, O G-d, let all the people praise thee. Then shall the earth yield her increase; and G-d, even our own G-d, shall bless us. G-d shall bless us; and all the ends of the earth shall fear him… Let us pray."

The whole church went quiet now, as their beloved minister prayed in silence. It was too solemn an occasion for singing and too glad for ordinary words. The old man, his broad shoulders bowed, his fine, clear features showing only the devotion they all expected of him, was about to take the wedding vows of his granddaughter, Timothea, the only surviving child of his son Benjamin, as she married Micheal Riordan. And everyone in the congregation knew that soon now, not only young Micheal but more than half the men in the county, in all of east Texas, and all across the South, would be marching or riding away to a war that loomed closer every hour.

Some neighbors, friends and family were already notable by their absence from Timmy Reid's wedding to Micheal Riordan. Stephen, Ben and Jemmy Singer removed to Frederick, Maryland during the past winter. Andrew, Rachel, Dan and Miriam Etherton were home in Norfolk. And Cooper Smith was only half attending the ceremony, although he stood beside his mother Elizabeth, supposedly keeping his little brother Jefferson in line. In truth, Coop was in total misery these days and felt this particular day had to be the worst he'd ever known, or close to it.

_What was there to praise G-d about?_ Coop wondered with all a young man's resentment and bitterness and confusion. _Hadn't G-d been behind Jemmy's reasons for going north last year? Hadn't G-d made the Ethertons decide to head home to Virginia a few months later? Hadn't G-d in both cases denied Cooper his fervent wish, to go with Jemmy and Danny to the Virginia Military Institute?_ _And worst of all, as though to put the final awful stamp on it all, hadn't G-d made Timmy… made Thea Reid fall in love with and pledge herself lifelong to Mickey Riordan instead of Cooper Smith? And wasn't G-d obliging Coop now to stand and watch and listen while Thea did that? How much was a fellow supposed to stand up under, anyhow? Why did G-d make or let these danged things happen? _

As always, Elisabeth Micaela Smith seemed to know her first born was at a profoundly low-point. Wordlessly, she grasped Cooper's hand and squeezed and offered him a teary smile. _She might not smile if she heard what I was just thinking! Grandpa Nate surely wouldn't! He'd go lookin' for a good stout hickory switch and take it to my backside, right outside this church. _Coop considered, and squeezed his mother's hand back.

_Guess I know better than to blame G-d for my troubles. Guess we're all of us going to have a lot worse troubles pretty soon than anything I've got to kick about, right now this morning. But dang, why do I have to stand here, actin' like I'm just fine with Mickey takin' Thea to wife? Dang all, why do I have to stand here like a deaf-mute, actin' like I don't care if my heart is tearin itself to pieces? And then I'm supposed to go to a danged party for them? Whose fine idea was that, anyhow? _

A woman a few rows in front of the Smith family's pew was quietly sobbing. Cooper figured that was likely to be old Missus Brightwell, who always attended and always wept at weddings. _Danged good thing a fellow ain't supposed to start bawlin' like a new branded calf or leakin' like rusty bucket! Fine thing it would be for a fella to stand in church with his eyes turnin' red and his throat catchin'! They're almost done, anyhow. Maybe I can break loose for a bit and take Jeffy fishin'. Maybe momma will make it okay with old Isaiah and Missus Riordan for me not t' stay and act like a grinnin' fool at the weddin' party! _

Thea's voice caught his attention now, low and clear and not the least bit shaky. "I, Timothea Anastasia Evangeline take you, Padraigh Micheal Sean Riordan to be my husband, to have and to hold from this day forward…" Thea was promising Mickey. Coop bit back a groan and closed his eyes. Maybe folks would think he was praying for the new couple. But the torment didn't stop. It got worse with the next part.

" Padraigh Micheal Sean in the presence of G-d and before our witnesses and friends, I, Timothea Anastasia Evangeline, with joy and in love take you to be my husband, to be the father of my children…" Thea continued. "and the companion of my days. I promise to fully share my life with you, through days of happiness or sadness, abundance or want. I pledge to you my unfailing love, _always."_ '

_Always, Timmy? _Coop squeezed his eyes shut against the sound and meaning of that word._ Your unfailing love, always… to Mickey Riordan? You mean it, don't you, Timmy? You mean it, Thea. He's got your whole, entire heart now, same as you've got mine, doesn't he? He's gonna be the father of your chldren… and your companion and … everything. Just everything, to you, always. How come I only see that now, today, Timmy? How come I didn't see it … _

_Nope, nope, I just purely didn't want to see the way you crane your neck back to smile just that way up at Mickey… How you light up like a thousand candles all at once, as soon as you see him or hear his voice… How you … love him…You love that tall, red-blond danged fool grandson of a Irish potato farmer! And he loves you, Thea. He does. I know that. How could he not love you? How could anyone not love you, Thea? I pledge you my unfailing love, Thea, always._

"Cooper, Cooper… son," Elisabeth Smith whispered, finally tugging at her older son's hand to get his attention. "Jefferson's much too fidgety to bear up under all the rest of the celebration. Will you take your little brother home, both of you change out of your good clothes and take him riding, … "

"I'll take Jeffy riding momma, surely." Coop agreed, knowing the woman who bore him could see right through to his core. "And when he gets tuckered, I'll come back to the Reid place, to bring you home, momma."

"That'll be very gracious of you, Kind Sir." Beth Smith answered, her voice husky and warm and loving as always. "Very gracious indeed. I thank you, kindly."

"Your obedient and humble servant, as always, Missus Beth, ma'am." Coop replied, following an old pattern of fond banter between them. _Your humble and obedient servant, Your Serene Highness Thea, if you ever need me to be. If you ever, ever need me. _Coop thought and kept his place by main force of will until the ceremony ended and he could race Jeffy to their horses.


	6. Chapter 6

SCENE FIVE somewhere in northern Colorado/southern Wyoming territories

"Si, Yanqui, we are _Comancheros_, but not in the way you mean it, Yanqui." the leader answered Coop, stepping out from behind one of the remaining supports of the burnt out hacienda's roof. "I am Joaquin Her Nell Eliseo Aguilar, and I was born in _la Comancheria_ as _los Conquistadores_ themselves named that part of the country nearly two centuries ago. And all these men are my compadres, my blood-brothers. And this country here was the hunting ground of our Shoshoni and Comanche grandfathers, when your white-eyes great grandfathers were starving across the Great Eastern Waters, because they had no horses and no lands of their own. So you must take better care not to spit on those who belong to this land. It is not we who do not belong here, Yanqui. It is you and your yellow haired friend."

Coop's blue-sky eyes flashed with temper and Duke knew what was likely to come next, weapons or no weapons so he took a half step closer to the clear leader of these Comancheros.

"We're not laying any claim to this land, Mister Aguilar." Duke said, spreading his arms wide to show he was being honest.

" We're headed to California, in fact. We were scouting that pass a few miles to the north of this hacienda when we saw the smoke and heard what sounded like rifle fire. We figured if it had been just one shot, it could be nothing to bother with. But there was so much smoke, we kinda figured, Coop and me, that someone might be in some kind of a fix down here. "

"He's tellin' the truth." Coop added, trying to look around the place and still keep one eye on the rifles pointed at him and Duke. "We rode down here to see if we could help. There were a few white settlers around these parts … after the War, and …"

" There are no Yanquis here! We need no Yanquis here, and we want no Yanquis' help!" another of Aguilar's men sneered. But Coop was paying him no heed. Duke was similarly preoccupied with the rifles aimed at them both, and only turned to glance at his friend when the Texan softly swore a blue streak and lunged towards what seemed to have been the fireplace of the hacienda's largest room. Before anyone could stop him or get off a single shot, Coop had both hands on what looked like a lady's rocking chair. The carved frame and once-fine upholstery were covered in soot but otherwise seemed intact. But from the way Coop was staring at the piece of furniture, Duke guessed it wasn't just any lady's chair to the older scout.

"And the settlers who built and lived in this hacienda …are my old friends, damn you, Aguilar! Now you tell me and tell me right this minute now where those people are! Where is Eli Randolph and his kids? Where are Micheal and Thea Riordan, right now? I know for certain sure they were here, because _my own mother_ gave them this rockin' chair before they ever left east Texas back in '65!"

"You will not speak in that way to _el jefe,_ Yanqui! How we deal with Yanquis on La Comancheria is no business of yours! And we need no Yanquis' help that comes always with the yellow-legs at its back to make it strong!" another of Aguilar's men insisted, this one with a scrawny beard that encircled and seemed to enlarge his already wide mouth. Then he punctuated his remark by knocking Coop off his feet with a well aimed rifle butt to the wiry scout's back.

"Yeah, it's plain t' see you needed no help burnin' this home right down around those two family's ears, Comanchero!" Coop shot back, climbing to his feet again.

"And I'd just like to know when did Comancheros go from stealin' horses and trader's goods all along these southern territories and trails to burnin' out homesteads? I'd just like to know what kinda prices you figure to get for the the captives you took outa here? Yeah, you tell me that, cause we've already heard all about how the Comanchero's latest stock in trade is the human beings they cart off like so many sacks of grain to slavery in Mexico!"

"Coop!" Duke yelled, wishing he'd knocked Coop senseless himself, rather than let him ride into this now buzzing hornet's nest.

"So you also come from Tejas, do you, Yanqui? You come riding into this place of ours like all the other Yanquis, as if you already owned it? So, I'd say you already know all there is to know about dealing in slaves and slavery. Your grandfather or great grandfather was _Tejicano, no_?" Aguilar demanded.

"Your near ancestors were among those like Houston, Austin, Travis and the rest who forced war on Mejico so that _Tejas, Nuevo_ _Mejico, la Nevada, el Colorado_ and _la California_ could be torn from _Mejico's_ control? _Y porque?_ Why? So they could spread their own chattel slavery across from the Great Waters of the east across to _La Pacifica!"_

_Uh-oh,_ Duke thought, groaning inwardly. _Now he's gone and done it! Now he's insulted Coop's grandfather and namesake, old Reverend Nathaniel Cooper!_

"Never mind what you think of the Texicans, Aguilar! We rode down here to see who set this place on fire." Coop snarled. "And now we know. You raided this hacienda and some of your compadres are already headed for the border with anyone here that was left alive as prisoners who are gonna be sold as slaves! And that's what happened. That's the truth of the matter isn't it? C'mon, you might as well admit that you killed whatever white men tried to defend this place and sent whatever women and children you found here south as slaves! I know that's what happened as well as you do, Comanchero!"

"And if that were the truth of the matter, white eyes, why would I admit as much to you, when mi compadres and I have you outnumbered and outgunned by … quite a lot?" Aguilar sneered. "You claim you already know all you need to put us on a gallows, or hang us from the nearest strong tree branch! You call us murderers and slavers when you have never laid eyes on us before this hour! Like all_ los diablos Yanquis_, you first fix the blame for whatever happens to your people always on someone else, and then you take revenge on those you blame whether they are at fault or no! _No, es verdad!_ That is the truth of the matter, is it not, Yanqui devil?"

"Bavi?" A woman's clear, plaintive voice called out, before Coop could answer Aguilar's counter accusations. "Bavi, did you find Missus Beth's rocking chair yet? I can't get her to even try going to sleep if she doesn't know where that is, if she can't see that it didn't get ruined in the fire. And if she can't get to sleep, soon, I'm truly afraid she'll have to be told the baby…" The speaker came around the eastern corner of the long room and stopped stock still and stared. She was a handsome, petite and curvaceous woman in her late twenties, Duke guessed. But her oval face, and her torn, worn dress were smeared with soot, her wide dark brown eyes were dulled by evident exhaustion. And her thick, dark-auburn hair had been roughly cropped short, near the base of her neck, making her look more like a wandering waif than a woman grown.

_This isn't Thea Riordan, then. _Duke speculated._ Coop said Thea was fair-haired. And whoever this woman is, she's likely had a bad fever not too long ago. That's the only reason I know of a woman would let her hair be cropped that way, at least. So who is she and why is Coop looking at her as if he sees a ghost? _

"Miriam?" Coop whispered, shaking his head. "Miri Randolph? But it can't be you… Last I heard from the folks in Nacogdoches was you'd come down with milk fever after birthin' your twins…and …"

"There was no doctor, no midwife and no chance that I'd survive?" The dark haired woman replied, with a weary smile. "Because your dearest momma, Missus Beth wasn't out here to pull me through? Well, it was a really close thing, in fact. I just have to figure Missus Beth reached down from Glory and worked her way… the way she always could, but through other hands… So I'm … alright. How are you, Cooper? You look real fine to these homesick eyes of mine!" Miriam Etherton Randolph opened her arms wide and Coop almost jumped to the other side of the room to fold her wilowy frame into his arms.


	7. Chapter 7

SCENE SIX The Riordan/Randolph homestead, near Los Miraboles Canyon,

"You're wonderful to see, Miri." Coop replied, as he stepped back a bit. "Just wonderful. But I don't… I can't understand… Where's Eli? Where are Mickey and … Thea? What in tarnation is goin' on here?"

Miri Randolph shuddered, staying close to her old friend for another moment, leaning her head on Coop's chest, without saying anything or looking around. "Well, that's sort of a long story, Cooper." the willowy brunette finally said. "And I haven't been properly introduced yet to your friend. So why don't we start there?"

Frowning, Coop raised one dark eyebrow and turned to glance at Duke. The tall blond scout shrugged. He felt as confused as Coop looked by everything they'd encountered here. The dark haired woman seemed completely unafraid of the Comanchero band. In fact her manner towards them suggested they were her protectors, if not her friends!

"Well Coop's not that well known for his manners, ma'am." Duke replied, loping over towards her. "I'm Duke Shannon. Coop and I scout for the Hale wagon train. We rode down this way to find another route, one more to the south, because this time of year we won't get through the northern passes in Utah and Nevada without a whole lot of trouble. Trail fever held us up quite a bit, this season."

"We heard something about that, I think, a few months ago, from other immigrant trains on the way to California." Miri said, holding out one small hand as if to shake hands with Duke like another man would. "I'm Miriam Randolph, from N'folk, Virginia originally, Mr. Shannon. And I met this not so well mannered friend of ours when I visited some cousins of mine in east Texas, just years and years ago, too many to count.

Then, when the War was over, some of us decided … the same way I suppose some of the people on your wagon train did, to try to make a new home out here. I wanted to teach school, once we set down roots. I suppose it looks to you like we'll have to just pull up stakes and find another place now. But as lonely as it is here, we came to love this part of the country. So that will … be just too bad… But of course, now there's this latest treaty. So we might have to leave Los Miraboles, after all."

"We willl be forced out, if the raiders, the Yanquis and the Long Knives who fight their Wars for them have their way!" Another of the Comancheros bitterly replied.

Coop hardly listened to Aguilar or his men. His sole focus was Miriam Randolph. "Miri, I still don't understand. What do you mean you might have to leave this place? The terms of the last treaty won't allow you to stay. It's just that simple."

"No, Yanqui." Aguilar argued. "No it is not simple at all. This country, that I have so often heard your white-eyes call badlands hold our people's history. These canyons and that plateau behind us have always held Strong Medicine for our women and the children they bring to the tribe. So we've made it our home. _Pia Wasape Ootupitu_, she knows that well, better than anyone, excepting only _mi prima, Mujer Aguila Real."_

"Golden Eagle Woman?" Duke muttered in a rough translation. "Your cousin, you said?"

At that, Aguilar finally smiled. "_Si, Yanqui, mi prima."_

Miriam Randolph smiled tiredly at the Comanchero leader, surprising Coop and Duke yet again. " Brown Bear, he calls me." She explained to the two scouts. 'Small Brown Bear Mother', to be exact. And Bavi's right, this has proven a fine place to raise our children, and the beginnings of a few strong lines of horses, as well. So what was our dream years ago, Cooper, Eli's and mine, Thea's and Mickey's is a real home at last. And I'll fight the world off if I have to stay… all of us will."

"Miri!" Coop blurted out, taking Miriam by both arms and turning her to face him, too worried and confused to be patient now. "What in the very devil is the matter with you? Don't you know who these men are and what they're going to do with you and… and… anyone else they get their hands, if we let them? Don't you understand they've probably already … already done for Eli and Mickey by this time? Don't you know they're going to take you and your children down into Mexico with them and …"

"Sell us into white slavery?" Miriam finished for the scout, pulling free of his grip and putting one small hand on each of her hips, shocking Coop speechless with her blunt answer.

"Cooper, dear, dear Cooper, you were right the first time. You're the one who doesn't understand. Exactly, exactly what you're so afraid of would have happened to me and to my children almost … five and a half, no, no, more like six and a half years ago, if it weren't for Bavi and his men, but especially Bavi. And witout him it would have happened to Thea, too. So, please, stop dancing around the questions you really want to ask, old friend.

I've never once lied to you, Cooper. I'm not about to start lying to you now. So you're going to have to believe what I tell you. Whether you want to or not. You … you have to remember that I've never been a liar, in my whole, entire life. And if I hesitated before… It was because, I'm so glad to see an old friend, and I'm a bit tired out this morning and …well, you just aren't going to like the answers, that's all."

"Well, that's usually the case when somebody tells me something I'm not expectin'." Coop muttered. " 'm sorry, Miri. I shouldn't have gone off on you like that. Grandpa Nate would reach down from Glory t' whoop my backside for acting that way. And Daddy would help!"

"Your Daddy? Danny Smith never raised his voice or his hand to a child in his life, Cooper, and you know it!" Miri Randolph exclaimed, shaking her head. "I can't think of a time he raised his voice to a grown person, for that matter. He never needed to, did he? But I told you, Cooper, this is a long story so maybe we should sit down … there must be someplace to sit down somewhere around here. It's only the main house here…"

"_Jefe! Los Diablos Yanquis!_ Dario was right! These two only came in alone to show the others the way through!" Another of Aguilar's lookouts abruptly shouted, cutting short whatever Miriam was about to say. "More riders are coming in, and they come at top speed! And they are Yanquis!"

Rifle fire cracked and clattered all along the ruined adobe walls, and whined across the escarpment, while one of Aguilar's men pulled Miri Randolph into the cover of a heavy, overturned table, and the rest answered the attackers shot for shot. The thunder of a good two dozen or more horses headed their way, shook the ground, while the Comancheros cussed and took shelter and fired back again. Duke crouched beside the table, wanting his own rifle back or his revolver at least, still wondering what strange turn of events made this young mother from Tidewater Virginia trust these admitted renegades with her own and her children's lives. Coop ducked once or twice into the slim shelter provided by a wide wooden beam that had evidently supported the roof here at one time.

"Is this what you have done, _Yanqui_?" Aguilar demanded, striding over to glare at Coop. "Is this what you have done, led your iwhite eyes compadres and perhaps behind them will come the long knives to kill us all? That is what the long knives most enjoy to do, is it not? What do they call it…to destroy their supposed enemies in detail, leaving nothing and no one behind, _si_?"

"We didn't lead anyone here, Aguilar!" Coop shot back. "Duke and me… We didn't know anyone was here to be found till we saw all that smoke! So whoever fired this hacienda, that's who you have to blame if someone's comin' in to make trouble for you right now. And whoever's headed in here, it sounds to me like they've got you outnumbered and outgunned. So maybe you should hold off on the accusations and let Duke and me help us all stay alive long enough to get some answers here! Maybe we both should."

"Maybe so, Yanqui." Aguilar said, eyeing Coop intently. "Maybe so. Answers are hard to get from a dead man, _no? Es verdad. _That much is true. 'rique, give these two Yanquis their weapons back, for now. But if they prove themselves as treacherous as the rest of their white eyes breed, you will know what to do, si? Comprendez, Yanquis? Play us false now and you will live, just long enough to regret it, I swear."

"Si, jefe." the Comanchero nodded, and suited action to words by producing the rifles and pistols taken from each of Chris Hale's scouts only a few moments ago.

Duke took his rifle, checked to make sure it was still loaded, then checked his revolver and gun belt, while Coop did the same with his own weapons. Then the tall blond scout crouched as low as he could behind a broken wall still half attached to one of the main supports of the hacienda and waited for a clear look and a clear shot, if need be at their attackers. Coop took cover beside Miriam Randolph, despite the angry glare of her apparent would-be protector, the Comanchero named Esteban. Then both scouts got another surprise as Miriam reached for, checked and carefully aimed a rifle in the direction of the incoming riders. Seeing Coop's eyes widen, the petite brunette once more offered a world-weary grin to her old friend from east Texas.

"You wanted to know where Mickey Riordan and my Eli are right now, Cooper?" Miriam asked, her wide dark eyes bright with tears. "Well, unless I'm absolutely mistaken, that's them riding in here right now, with a whole lot of Mickey's latest batch of … friends. And I pray G-d Eli's still trying to talk Mickey out of doing anything more dangerously foolish than he's already done. But I truly don't know. I don't know if Micheal is listening to anyone these days, except…" Miriam sighed.

"Except for who, Miri?" Coop asked watching his long time friend intently and wondering why she looked more scared now than she had when he first saw her in this burnt out hacienda. "Who is Mickey listening to?"

"Except for a man from Fort Worth, who call himself Reverend Anthony Godsey. And despite that title, one thing I already know … one thing we all of us here already learned is that 'the Reverend' only listens to his own notion of G-d, to his pride, his envy, his hatreds and some half-insane need for vengeance. Then he takes all that poison, Cooper, and feeds it to angry, bitter men like Micheal Riordan, building up their fears and all of our nightmares. And you _just might remember_, old friend, the extremes Micheal's jealousy and fears took him to in the past."


	8. Chapter 8

SCENE SEVEN FLASHBACK: Nacogdoches, Texas, March, 1866

"Thea! Thea, where are you, Wife? Timothea Anastasia Evangeline Riordan, answer me, right now this moment! Thea!" Micheal Riordan called out, his voice easily carrying across the house and, Cooper Smith thought, likely across most of east Texas, the way he was shouting.

"Why, I'm right over here, Mickey." Thea finally answered, laughing like a schoolgirl, but immediately getting up from the old swing on the verandah of her late grandfather's house. "Whatever are you carrying on about that way for?"

"It seems more likely you're the one who's been carrying on, Wife." Micheal answered, striding towards her with a thunderous frown on his long face. "You're a married woman with children, Thea! What do you mean by sitting in public with another man? What are our friends and neighbors and family to think when you behave as though you were still a … debutante, Wife?"

" Well, I figure it this way. They're likely to think Thea was just catching up with an old friend, Mickey." Coop stood up and answered before Thea could say another word. "I only got back home a few months ago, myself, as you may not have heard. And my momma's feeling a little under the weather lately. So she asked me to come over with some more of the salve she made up to ease little Micky's cough."

"Micaela, my daughter, is doing much better now." Riordan said, as if Thea weren't standing there at all, Coop thought, almost as if his wife didn't exist, unless he wanted to make his claim on her known.

But Thea wasn't about to be ignored or forgotten. "That's very kind of Missus Beth, Cooper. Do thank her for us, won't you? I'm sorry to hear she's not feeling so well. And, you, Husband…" Thea said, turning to smile up at Micheal. "Isn't there something more you wanted to say to our good friend Cooper, before he goes on with the errands he's running for his mother, today?"

Riordan's mouth grew taut for a moment, while Coop hid a grin behind one hand. Thea had him well in hand after all, it seemed. And good for her. Mickey had always needed someone to keep him firmly reined back.

"I … uhm… yes, yes there is… Cooper, we're both glad, very glad to see you safe home again, Thea and I. Everyone is. And we're … Thea and I… we're …we were very grieved to hear that young Jefferson was lost… lost …in the Conflict. Our deep condolences to your mother and you."

"Thanks." Coop nodded, ducking his head and swallowing hard, as he still did, on the raw pain of Jeff's dying and how it came about. "A mortal lot of the boys still haven't made it home, it seems to me, the more folks I talk to. Too many never will now, I guess. Thea, Mickey, it's … grand to see you both. You both look… fine. But I'd better get on with those errands now. I was real sorry, too, to hear that your Grandfather passed on last winter, Thea. He was an amazing man."

"Yes, yes he was." Riordan once more answered as if he had to speak for Thea. But Coop couldn't help noting that Thea wasn't happy about that practice at all. "We miss the old Reverend greatly. Everyone does."

"Yes, yes, we do." Coop agreed, trying to tell himself it was just the War and how it all fell out at the end that was affecting the way he saw and heard Mickey Riordan now. They were all of them changed by the last four years' ordeal. All of them were different in ways no one ever expected, from the youngsters they'd been. How could they not be? What some called the War, and others the Conflict, and yet others were starting to call the Recent Unpleasantness, had taken the whole, entire world they'd known apart by the seams and impossibly, tried to put it back together, again.

"Please tell Missus Beth I'll come calling just as soon as our little one's well enough to come with me and cheer her up some. She won't believe how fast Micky is growing. I can hardly believe myself that our little girl is almost.. five years old now." Thea added, ignoring her husband's sharp glance. Didn't Mickey think Thea was still capable of independent thought or action? And if he didn't, Coop wondered, had he entirely forgotten how stubborn and self-willed his Wife had always been?

"That'll do momma a whole lot of good, Thea, thanks. Well, I'll get on my way. Hope t' see you…both real soon." Coop nodded. Everyone in Nacogdoches seemed radically different these days, he considered as he jumped back onto Gambler and headed down half-circle path away from the old Reid house. So if both Thea and Mickey Riordan were showing themselves likewise changed, he shouldn't be so surprised, should he? Mickey's stiffly formal manner almost made Coop want to burst out laughing right in his face; and so did the way Thea stood up for herself, almost as if it were some private sort of game they were playing. And who knew, maybe that was all there was to it.

_What do I know about how husbands and wives get on with each other? Momma and Daddy surely never let Jeffy or me know it if they disagreed about something between them. And they must've done, some time or other. Thea and Mickey have been married for five years now, after all. They've got little Drew and the baby, Micaela now to worry over, too, and the runnin' of old Reverend Reid's place… What do I know about it? Nothin. Just nothin' at all, that's what. _Coop considered as he found himself drifting west away from the turn off for the old Brightwell place.

"Hey there, fella," Coop laughingly chided Gambler, reining the sorrel in. "where'd you figure you were headin' off to, just then? We've got all these bundles and simples and such to deliver for momma, so she don't wear herself down to a nubbin. Sometimes I think she still tends to the ailments of the whole, entire county and three quarters of east Texas, besides! Oh, I get it, it was me that was driftin', not you, huh? Well, neither one of us is goin' anywhere except where momma needs us, right now. Y' got that, fella? Well… well, alright then, let's go."

"Cooper!" A man's voice called out from about a quarter mile behind him, and Coop turned in the saddle, surprised to see Mickey Riordan riding hard, apparently to catch him up. "Cooper, wait on me, will you?" Riordan called out, as he came closer.

"What's the matter, Mickey? Is it Micky? Momma was real glad to hear she was improving…" Coop started to say as the tall blond pulled up beside him on a blue roan.

"No, Cooper. My daughter will soon be entirely well, thank you." Riordan answered, once more stiffly formal. "I … followed you, Cooper. I followed you just now because there is a matter that concerns only you and I, directly. There is a matter I wanted to discuss with you, that is."

"Without Thea catchin' on, is that it, Mickey?" Coop offered. "What's it about then? I know you're not planning some surprise for her birthday already… that's in September. So what's going on?"

" No. No, you're entirely wrong there. My wife knows every plan I have, Cooper. We comprehend one another perfectly. We confide in each other completely." the blond answered, as if Coop had suggested something so absurd it was hardly worth an answer. "It's you who doesn't seem to understand. And it may be that being unmarried as yet you simply cannot grasp how that … how the marriage bond changes … everything between two people, and changes as well everything between those two people and the rest of the world."

Coop felt his jaw and his shoulders tighten all by themselves, not so much at what Riordan said as the way he said it. But since coming home from the War, Daniel Smith's first born son had tried his level best to follow his late father's example of long deliberation and tremendous patience. And some days that was fairly easy. But other days it proved danged hard. Today was turning fast into one of those 'danged hard' ones.

"Well, well now, maybe I'm gettin' a little thick headed here, Mickey. But I don't think I understand just what it is you're sayin'" Coop offered. "In fact, I think I must've misunderstood you. Because it sounded almost like you think I insulted you or Thea somehow. But you know better than that, don't you, Mickey? You know that's something I would no more do than I would … " Coop shook his head trying to think of a wild enough example. "jump the moon for a Yankee dollar!"

"Yankee dollars go pretty far with some folks, these days, from what I hear, around the county." Micheal answered. "And I was not suggesting you insulted my wife or myself. If I thought you had, I would not be calmly discussing the matter with you, sir. I was merely going to offer what seemed to be a badly needed reminder of some lesser proprieties that … most of us found … less than practicable baggage to carry … into service… during the Conflict. I was simply going to ask that you not refer to my wife by her given name any longer. We're not children any longer, Cooper. None of us are. Indeed, some of us are parents, now. So I will ask, while we're still here in Nacogdoches that you only refer to my wife as Mrs. Riordan. I only ask that you observe the same proprieties with her and in her company that anyone of us would naturally observe with your lady mother. Surely that is not too much respect to ask for, Cooper."

Coop stared at Riordan for a full minute and then swallowed hard to keep from laughing at his boyhood friend and rival. "You rode after me just now to ask me to call … to call her Mrs…" he started to say, when the rest of what Riordan's words hit him like a suttler's wagon careening off a bridge. "What in the very devil do you mean by that, Mr. Riordan?" Cooper demanded. "What do you mean while you're still in Nacogdoches?"

"That's simple to explain, even if it's hardly your business, Cooper. As we already mentioned, we've been waiting for my daughter to recover fully. She will be well soon. Once she is, and once we've sold my wife's grandfather's property for as close to a decent sum as we can hope for these days, my wife, my children and I are leaving Texas. We're leaving to make a new home, elsewhere." Riordan answered. "We're going out to establish a home for ourselves in Colorado Territory, near Los Miraboles canyon."


	9. Chapter 9

SCENE EIGHT Outside the Riordan/Randolph homestead, near Los Miraboles Canyon

The fire fight along the escarpment south of Los Miraboloes canyon seemed to go on for hours. But it lasted only a few minutes before the riders pulled up short of entering the compound and retreated in a fairly orderly fashion. But they left three dead behind. When the rest of the troop, a few less than thirty, were well out of range of the Comanchero's rifles, the riders dismounted and took care of their horses. Four more took picket duty and guarded both the line of horses and the barely marked trail between their rough camp and the hacienda. One rider sat grimly silent while another treated a gunshot wound to his right shoulder. But one of the troop had more pressing business.

"Reverend!" Eli Randolph shouted, running up to the troop's self declared leader. "Reverend, did you not hear, or did you not understand what I just told you for the thousandth time? There are women and children in that hacienda, inside that compound! Our wives and children, Micheal's and mine, are still in there! So we can't go riding in there again, as if we were charging some damnYankee breastworks!"

Dismounting from his steel dust gelding, that leader, a tall, broad shouldered native Georgian, who these days called himself Reverend Anthony Godsey looked back at Randolph with no little amusement in his wide grey eyes.

"And what exactly makes you believe, Randolph, that those half breeds, those heartless, G-dless savages haven't already carried your families off into captivity… or worse, by this time?" Godsey asked.

"The same thing that made me think so before we started back towards Los Miraboles, Reverend!" Eli answered wearily wondering again if Godsey was listening to him. "I know the man who leads those Comancheros. I know Joaquin Aguilar. And he's not one of the Comancheros who've become …slavers. He never will be, Reverend. His mother and sister were taken by raiders, years ago. So was Bavi, but he got away from them."

" That happened, or so this Bavi, this renegade told you, years ago, Randolph?" Godsey reiterated. "Well, even a savage beast can change its stripes, change its prey when what is available to feed on changes, can't it? You amaze me, Randolph, truly. You have an almost childlike trust in situations and creatures which cannot be trusted. And yet, despite all I've done, you have yet to place your faith in me, a man of the cloth. Why is that?"

Randolph ran one hand back through his thick, collar length dark hair and glared at the Reverend. "I just told you again why I don't trust you, Reverend! You're ready, willing and it seems to me, almost eager, to put the lives of innocent women and children in mortal danger. And since those women and children are my family and Micheal's, I'm not about to let you do that! Never mind you're likely to start a war out here with your notions of how to go at an entrenched position! So maybe you are a man of the cloth, after all, Reverend. Cause you surely couldn't be any kind of soldier, not even the kind I was, a danged fool kid, who learned the hard way time and time again, by losing one friend after another, not to do that!"

"But the notion of riding into the compound at full speed and firing at will was not my plan originally, Randolph." Godsey replied. "I thought you knew that much. This plan of attack came from your good friend, Micheal Riordan. He seemed to believe it would give us the element of surprise against the savages inside the compound. I thought he would surely have told you that much, by this time. Perhaps you should consult with him, before you start making accusations."

Randolph frowned and looked away. "Micheal doesn't exactly confide in me, these days. I thought you'd know that much, Reverend. We… don't agree on a lot of things, these days. So we don't exactly have long conversations. I thought he might have told you that much. "

"Do you mock me now, Randolph?" Godsey demanded, his temper visibly rising. "Do you mock the man of the cloth who brought this troop together to cleanse this territory of predators and savages, for the Almight and for the sake of all decent, civilized, G-d fearing white people?"

Eli shook his head and looked down. "If there's anyone who should be laughed at here, Reverend, its me and Micheal. We had the completely, completely crazed idea that we could make a home here. We joked, right at first, when things seemed to be going our way for awhile that we should have renamed the place Los Milagros. Y'see, everyone back down to home said it would be a miracle if we made a go of it out in these badlands, when everyone, even the Comanche, left this desert decades ago."

"So that's what happened to you, Randolph?" Godsey asked, in a slightly quieter tone. "Is that it? You lost your faith? You no longer believe miracles can be granted by G-d in these sad, modern times?"

"If he tells you that's so, Reverend, my friend Elias is not being honest." Micheal Riordan replied, striding over to join the arguing pair. The older Texan's thick sandy hair was showing more grey than Randolph's these days, and his wide dark eyes held a constantly bitter cast.

"He told me himself that his Miriam's surviving milk fever last year was nothing short of a miracle, a miracle doubled by the birth of his healthy twins. And I agree. Everyone does. Los Miraboles could have lost three precious lives all at once."

"It was Thea who pulled Miri through, Mick, and you know that. Thea and the Good Lord Above kept Miri and the twins alive." Eli protested. "Thea was simply amazing, using everything about midwifery she'd learned from Beth Smith and from Bavi's mother, as well."

Riordan swore and reached for his life long friend's shirt collar, pulling Eli towards him until the two Texans were practically nose to nose.

"My wife, Timothea Riordan learned nothing from those savages, old friend! She learned nothing but cruelty and privation and how to break her own heart, all the while she tried to help them step out of the Dark Ages! I will not have it said that my wife had anything to learn from those invincibly ignorant heathens! I will not have the time she wasted among those Comancheros and their …women and their brats mentioned again in my hearing! Do you understand me, Elias? Do you understand?"

"I understand you, Micheal." Randolph nodded, pulling out of the taller man's grasp. "Yes, I'm sure I understand. I'll leave you two to your strategizing now. At least I hope you have some strategizing to do, since riding headlong into that compound didn't work out very well."

"And what would you suggest, if you don't mind saying, before you leave to write in that journal of yours, Elias, old friend?" Riordan asked, folding his long arms across his chest and waiting for the answer both men knew by heart

"I'd suggest the same thing I've been suggesting for weeks now, old friend!" Eli anwered, returning frown for frown.

" Give up this so called campaign as a bad 'go' all around! Forget about the Reverend here and his Holy Causes, and his cleansing the desert! Let go the needless, pointless jealousy and anger that's been driving you to hurt Thea so badly you don't care who else gets hurt! Let go of the lies that fraud, that fake-preacherman's been feeding you, Micheal! Give it up, Micheal, and give it up now! Bavi and his men know this territory as well as you and I know the counties around Nacogdoches, Micheal. They can disappear into any one of a thousand culverts or caves or passes around here. They can vanish into the night, take one of those passes south, or north or west, and just never be found by any white men who might come looking, ever.

And they can, _and they will_ take our families with them, Micheal. my Miri and Nell, and the twins, Your Micky and little Timothy, too, and Thea. And they'll take care of our wives and our children, Micheal, fine, good care of them all. They count them as part of their band now, and you know that as well as I do! But you and I, old friend, you and I if we go on with this losing fight, will lose everyone that matters to us. You and I, Micheal, will never, not for an hour, not for so much as an instant see our families again!"

Now Reverend Godsey stepped between the two Texans, ignoring Randolph completely to glare at Micheal Riordan. "Is this dastardly, cowardly jabber what your old friend has been filling your ears with whenever he had a moment to talk with you, Micheal? Is this absurdly dangerously defeatist tripe he's offering what's been troubling you so deeply, my young friend?" Godsey asked.

"Elias is no coward, Reverend." Riordan shook his head sadly. "He's many things, but no coward is Elias Randolph. We went through the whole Conflict together, Elias and I, as part of the Texas Brigade. We fought the damnYankees through from the Seven Days to Gettysburg to Franklin and back through Georgia to the Carolinas again. Indeed, with a great many other youths of our acquaintance we fought all through the Conflict side by side in what came to be called 'The Old Ragged First', the First Texas Infantry, originally part of the Army of Northern Virginia and laterly the Army of Tennessee.

And when General Johnston finally surrendered that Army, the 12th of April in the '65, there were only a hundred and forty nine men in the First Texas, left to surrender their arms. There were only a hundred and forty nine of us left, able to stand up long enough to surrender our arms… out of a total of 12 Companies that started, each with as close as they could come to a hundred men. And one of those boys at one point wrote home to Texas, saying, 'we cannot be whipped, although they may kill us all,'. And they danged near did."

"Well, that's a proud story indeed, my friend. However it seems to me now that Mr. Randolph has already surrendered, once more. He has already accepted what to us is the intolerable status quo. And if that is indeed the case, we should not allow…" The Reverend objected.

"We should not impede my long time friend Elias from leaving the troop, Reverend, if that's what he wishes to do. This isn't the Army. There's no one here with the authority of a government behind them." Riordan interupted, keeping his dark gaze on Godsey's wide, bright grey eyes.

"Not you, not I nor anyone else here has the right to hold any man against his free will. I am staying with the troop of my own will. I have made my own decision and my personal commitment to the troop and its goals, as you very well know. But Elias came to the troop with me because of our long friendship. So if he feels the time is right for his departure, for his return to Miriam and his children, I will not gainsay him, or let anyone else do so."

"My friend, if his commitment is to those inside that compound," Godsey protested, his color rising till his long face was flushed red. "then like them, he is the enemy of our chosen Cause! He is the ally of a band of savages, who he himself declares intend nothing less than the abduction of white women and children! This is directly against the commandments of Our Good Lord! That is an absolute abdication of our G-d's Will, and of Manifest Destiny here! That is…"

"My cue to get the devil out of here, Reverend." Eli interjected, a smile creasing his weathered features and crinkling his wide, hazel eyes. In fact he almost wanted to laugh at the Reverend. "But I'm no one's enemy any longer. I'm not fighting anyone, ever again, if I can possibly help it, I can promise you that. Four years was about three years and ten months too much fighting for me. I had my fill.

I'm an overly doting, not nearly strict enough father and a devoted, not nearly patient enough husband and a pretty darned good horse wrangler to boot, but not a soldier. Wasn't that much of a soldier when I was still signed up.

But Micheal's too good a friend to say that. So, I'm goin' home to my family now. And Micheal, if you've got any sense at all, if you've got anything left in your gut these days besides a real fine mad on with most of the world, you'll do the same. I won't take up arms against you, Micheal, you know that. But I will protect my family and yours from these danged crazed fools. You can take that, with my word behind to the bank. But you should surely know that too, by this time. And there's something else you should know, something you do know, even though you're real busy these days pretending you don't. There's Thea…"

Now it was Riordan whose face grew stern and angry. But Eli Randolph knew his boyhood friend better than a great many souls. So he wasn't about to be turned away by Riordan's harsh rages or wounded pride any more.

"Thea loves you more than anyone on the face of the earth, Micheal Riordan. She loves you so much she left her whole, entire world behind for you and your children, to make a new home, to make a new start. She came to this … wasteland and fell in love with it, just as you did, with its severe beauty and it's deep silences and it's unequivocal signs of G-d's handiwork on all sides. She brought her children here, despite all the risks and the loneliness and the huge, heart-breaking separation from all they had known. And you know all that. You know it's the G-d's honest truth. Or you used to know! So, come back with me, Micheal, come back and we'll take our families and find a place where something besides alkali and prickly pears abound. Come back, Thea will…"

"My wife will do what, Elias?" Riordan demanded in a painfull whisper. "What will my wife do? Will she stop acting as if savages and heathens are her close kin and practically her only friends? Will she cease behaving as though she's a half-breed reared amongst them instead of a decent, properly married, properly chaste white woman? Will she realize the baldfaced truth of the matter, _that Aguilar's son_ _shamed my daughter!_ Will she no longer turn to that damnable renegade-chief, Aguilar as though he truly were the brother she never had? Will she realize that savage has terrible, wicked designs upon her? Will she recall she's my wife and behave properly as such? Will she at long last recollect her marriage vows?"

"Do you recollect yours, old friend?" Randolph asked, fixing his gaze on Riordan's face. "Will you recollect how a girl who seemed as fragile, as ephemeral as early spring sunlight gave you and your children together every ounce of strength she possessed and then more? Will you remember a girl who everyone thought couldn't live without her grandfather's mansion or her satins and silks crossed the country in a canvass topped wagon, wearing homespun and denims because of her vast love and those same marriage vows? Will you remember how a girl who no one believed could last a day without parties and balls to plan and go to became the heart and the mainstay of Los Miraboles hacienda when one by one the rest of us wanted to give it all up?"

"Will you recollect, Elias who my wife turned to when she, even she began to lose heart? Will you recollect or forget that my wife turned from me…." Riordan asked, turning away from Randolph. "My wife turned from me … shall I simply forget that now? Shall I be magnanimous and forgiving of all that humiliation, scandal and shame? Shall I _not_ recoup, not revenge my good name?"

"If I were a man of the cloth, that's what I'd counsel you to do, or rather not to do, yes" Randolph nodded, with a quick glance at Godsey. "But that's not what he's been filling your mind with all this time, is it, old friend? No, not him, he's old-school all the way, isn't he Micheal? He's a lot like the ministers back at that school your grandfather sent you to, isn't he? He's always going on about wickedness and sin and retribution, punishment… and pride.

He's a lot like your grandfather that way, instead of being like old Asher Reid, isn't he? Everything with old Gabriel Sean Eamon Riordan

was always right or it was always wrong. No shades of grey, much less Free Will. Everyone with him was eternally, helplessly bound for Heaven or for Hell, no Purgatory, not even Limbo no, nothing in between, no margin for humanity at all, much less human frailty! Predestination! It's all already set down! Not a chance for a man or a woman to change their Fate. Nothing's to be done. Well, if that's what you want to believe, old friend, you go right ahead. I don't and I can't and I won't!"

"I believe a man's got to take care of his own, Elias, the best way he can. You have your way of doing that, old friend. And I have mine. And we just happen not to agree." Riordan answered, and strode away.

"So you are leaving the troop, Mr. Randolph?" Godsey sneered, as Randolph turned towards the picket line. "You_ are_ abandoning the Cause at this late date? Your only friend remains with us, fully as committed as ever, but you are abandoning Micheal as well? You have no more heart for fighting, you say? I cannot help but note, you still have the heart, for want of a better word, for confusing and wounding our mutual friend. We shall certainly be better off without your weakening influence, sir. That one bay tobiano I believe was your mount, and your property, as well. We will no doubt quite easily replace both you and the horse in our numbers. Be gone then. No more of your treachery, if you please."

"Thanks, Reverend. Real good of you to _let me_ leave with _my own horse."_ Eli replied. "Guess you don't remember what I told you when we first met. Being from Georgia, you might not understand, but a Texan will give up his revolver, his rifle and his outfit, before he'll give up his horse. We're just kinda particularly touchy that way. Nobody touches our horses without our say-so. And nobody, just nobody ever steals a Texan's horse and gets away with it clean. Being from Georgia, you might not understand. But Texas is a real big place, way too big for a man to let himself be caught flatfooted that way.

Oh, and by the way, you might not have noticed, being even less a soldier than I am, myself, Reverend. But whoever is inside that compound knows just what they're doing, knows just exactly how to defend a tight place from a considerably larger force coming right at him. So right now, I'm betting that Aguilar has somehow recruited him some boys like the ones I knew in the First Texas. Because we had a mortal lot of experience with that kind of fight."

Godsey chuckled coldly at that, and the sound did nothing to reassure Eli Randolph at all. The Reverend might not be outright crazy, but he was no one to trust. Nevertheless, Eli steeled his backbone, squared his shoulders and went for his horse. Miri expected him home, hopefullly with Micheal in tow more than a week back. Whatever happened next, Eli knew he couldn't fail his family or his friends if there was any chance left at all to get them out of this boondoggle alive, whole and well. He just wished he didn't feel the distinct need to walk or ride backwards back to the hacienda. At least dusk was fading into night now. Godsey wouldn't risk a fire fight in the dark. He didn't have the know-how or the nerve, and neither did anyone in the troop, except Mickey Riordan. That much Eli knew.

One hour later, five miles away from the ruined hacienda, Anthony Godsey, who much preferred being called the Reverend, or Reverend Mr. Godsey, stood in front of the escarpment, giving out yet more orders to his constantly shrinking troop of raiders.

"Our erstwhile companion Elias Randolph has committed treason against this company, and betrayed his solemn word to the Almighty. He is therefore an apostate and an utter scoundrel, just as I have feared he would prove himself to be, sooner or later. There can be no further doubt, gentlemen, that Elias Randolph means to betray our troop to the savages at his first opportunity. I do not intend he should have any such chance. I do not intend that this treacherously problematic personage should be allowed to give an instant's further aid and comfort to those brutal, bloodthirsty barbarians! Therefore, gentlemen, it falls to you this evening, to deal with Randolph's disloyalty and cowardice with absolute finality."

"Rev'rnd," one of the troop, a rangy, whip thin strawberry blond former sharpshooter from Alabama interrupted. "Rev'rnd, 'm sorry, but I didn't make out more 'n half what ya just said. An' I don't think th' boys here picked up on it much better than me. D'ya think ya could put it to us boys again, without all that fancy church on Sunday kinda talk?"

"Surely, my friend. Surely." Godsey agreed. "Elias Randolph has deserted the troop as of this evening. He somehow has the eroneous notion that I gave him leave to go. I did no such thing, of course. He gave his solemn oath to join and remain with this troop, and as that oath was made to G-d, I have no power to revoke it. Sadly, I know Randolph means to rejoin our enemy inside that compound, rejoin those savages, despite what they have done. I want you gentlemen to stop Elias Randolph from regaining the shelter of that burnt out hacienda. I want you gentlemen to use any means necessary to prevent Elias Randolph from joining or helping our enemies there with his weaponry and his knowledge of this troop. Do you understand me now?"

"Oh, yes sir, Rev'rnd. We got it now. We'll stop that Texan permanent for ya, Rev'rnd, easy as fallin' off a log." The Alabaman nodded.

"Was ya wantin' us to do for that other east Texan, that danged hotheaded Riordan, too?"

Godsey frowned, pursing his lips and seemed to ponder the question deeply for a long moment. Then he offered his troopers a rare, icy smile.

"If it becomes necessary, gentlemen, yes. If it becomes necessary, your orders are to eliminate…to rid our fair company and our Cause of both our most recent recruits. I begin to believe they have proven more trouble than they are truly worth. I have been vouchsafed a new understanding from the All-Mighty. We can achieve our goal here without them. I see that now, quite clearly. In other words,

in simpler words, gentlemen, Elias Randolph must die before he can reach the enemy camp. And if Micheal Riordan provokes you somehow, then kill him as well. Their deaths can be conveniently blamed on the savages, thus devastating their poor, deluded widows and orphans and easing our re-entry into the compound. No doubt those frail, heartbroken creatures will welcome us then, and with open arms."

"But them Injuns an' Mexicans in there, Rev'rnd, they ain't about t' welcome us nohow! They already done proved that, ain't they, when we come at 'em down there? How we gonna deal with all o' them?" Another member of the troop called out.

"Exactly as they should always have been dealt with, my friend." Godsey answered, relaxing into one of his most favorite monologues.

"The heathen, the infidels, and all those who do not accept the word of the Almighty, shall be annihilated! They shall be driven forth even as Hagar was driven forth into the desert at the Almighty's command! They shall be thrown down and they shall be consumed, even as Jezebel was consumed by wild dogs! Someone inside that compound started the process of razing a site of wickedness and degradation to the ground. We will finish the task! We will burn, we will rend, we will salt the ground those savages claim, so that nothing will grow there again! They and their wickedness shall be destroyed to the last of their kind, even as the Almighty has said, not by floods as in ancient times, but by the fire, this time!"


	10. Chapter 11

SCENE NINE The Riordan/Randolph homestead, near Los Miraboles Canyon

Cooper Smith sat next to Miriam Randolph as she took a few quiet moments to play with and feed some supper to her twins, named, he'd been surprised and a little chagrined to learn, Nathaniel and Jacob.

"Not for me and my cousin up in Wyoming Territory, I hope, Miri." the scout, who'd been christened Nathaniel Kieran Anglim Cooper, asked. "We're not worth a hill of beans put together, much less being named after."

"Don't be silly! We named the twins for your grandfathers, Nathaniel Cooper and Jacob Smith, two truly fine gentlemen who surely deserve more than one namesake each." Miri answered. "But what do you hear from that wild-heart cousin of yours, these days, Cooper? Has Jess really put down roots up in Wyoming? I have to say, when I heard he might have, I could hardly believe it."

"He likes it up there pretty well. He's even gone partners on a small ranch, which I have to admit, I found hard to imagine myself. So of the two of us, I'm more the tumbleweed these days, still scouting for Chris Hale's train." Coop shrugged. "Still haven't found anywhere to settle."

"You never think any more about going back to Nacogdoches?" Miri probed. "That is, when you're ready to stop tumbling across the plains and rivers and mountains?"

"With momma and so many others gone… " Coop shook his head. "I dunno, Miri. Last time I stopped there, it still didn't feel like home, without her, without Jeffy… and …"

"Without Thea?"Miriam asked, with a look that said she hated asking but still wanted to know the answer.

"She married Mickey a long time ago, Miri. So the answer's no. I don't think about Thea much at all, or I didn't for a long time… before today." Coop turned from trying to interest one year old Jacob in his namesake's battered and tarnished watch-fob, that had no watch to go with it, to glance at Miriam sharply.

"But ever since I got here, Miri, ever since I laid eyes on you, I've been wondering the same thing. When are you going to tell me what happened to Thea? How did she … what happened to her? I know you're holding back cause it's not easy saying or easy hearing… But … you said I was dancin' all around the question I wanted to ask you. So now I'm right out asking. So just tell me. What happened to Thea?"

"She saved our lives, Cooper, all of our lives." Miriam answered quietly and somehow proudly, Coop thought. "And she was… purely amazing doing it, too."

"Well, Timmy… Thea, I mean always was amazing … to me, anyhow." Coop nodded. "But go on, Miri. I … want to know. "

Miriam smiled tiredly and laid both her hands on Coop's. "Alright, Cooper. Do you remember how when we were kids back in Nacogdoches I was the one everyone plagued because I thought I wanted to be a midwife and even a doctor if I could. I was always running after your momma and trying to learn her ways, and her skills and such. I was in her kitchen or her still room almost as much as Jemmy Singer was back then, before he and his Daddy …moved away. And everyone said it was all because I had a case for Jemmy. But I never did, I pretended to sometimes, because I liked to plague some folks right back again in those days…"

"Especially Eli, because he never had a case for anyone but you, right?" Coop chuckled. "Alright. Yeah, I remember all that. What does it have to do…"

"Well, you see it wasn't me who truly learned from your momma. Oh, I picked up some of her ways with making simples and salves. But it turned out, Thea was the one who learned her … well, I'd call it magic, if you think it wouldn't insult Missus Beth's memory. When we first met Bavi and his people out here, it was Thea who worked Missus Beth's healing ways for Bavi's sisters. It was Thea who kept them both and their babies from dying in childbirth. And to Bavi's people, every child is not just thoroughly loved and cherished but desperately needed if they're going to survive into even one more generation.

Now all that happened at the point when we were just getting to know each other, our little band from east Texas and Bavi's people. And I know you can understand, Cooper that it wasn't easy trying to live alongside each other. They thought we wanted to take their lands, when all we wanted, truly was a new home here. And we thought they wanted to drive us away. When all they wanted was not to be cheated, lied to and robbed by another band of white settlers.

So it was Thea who eased Bavi's uncle who had been their leader, through his last illness. And that, along with her midwifery began the process of drawing us all together. And she did that without once letting that good, wise old man seem weak or dependent. And I think in that case she learned what to do while her own grandfather was dying. So Bavi's people came to trust Thea, and to trust us because of her. And when things began to go badly here for just about everyone, that trust, the friendships that grew out of it, helped us all get through… It still is, you can see that, can't you, Cooper?" Miriam asked her dark, wide eyes full of worry and compassion.

"I guess so." Coop agreed, shifting his weight from one uncomfortable spot to another. He was trying to imagine Thea working the same kind of healing his mother did so often for so many. But that wasn't fitting in his head anymore comfortably than the crumbling adobe blocks fit underneath him right now.

"But what happened then?" Duke asked, from his post by the wall across from the old friends. "Seems to me you've only told half the story, Mrs. Randolph."

"Big pitchers have big ears, too, it seems to me." Coop laughed. "Aren't you supposed to be keeping an eye out towards that canyon?"

"I am. Nothing and no one is moving out there." Duke answered. "But I apologize, Mrs. Randolph, for eavesdropping. I just know this close-mouthed black haired tombstone you're talking to. And he'd never let anyone in on what sounds like a pretty interesting story. But, I'll move further away if you'd rather…"

"No, no, it's fine." Miriam shook her head. "And please, call me Miriam. Mrs. Randolph will always be Eli's grandmother, as far as I'm concerned. What happened then wasn't an event, it was a person. It was a man who calls himself a man of the cloth, a Man of G-d. He calls himself the Reverend Anthony Alexander Zerachiel Godsey. And he claims to be a minister out here on a Holy Mission.

He came into this part of the territory almost two years ago now, with a troop of men. And most of them are former soldiers, I think, former Confederates, like Eli and Micheal, and you, Cooper. But what I know for certain sure is that all of them are worse renegades, thieves and … outlaws than any of Bavi's men could ever be. And I wish I could tell you we knew Reverend Godsey brought nothing but trouble with him right away. But we didn't.

Well, the Reverend came out here claiming it was his vocation to bring G-d to this territory. But all he brought was hatred, violence and vengeance. And more than anything or anyone, he seems to hate people like Bavi and his family… people of both Indian and Mexican families. I don't know why and I'm not sure I want to. What I do know is he succeeded in tearing our home here apart. He succeeded in setting us at odds with each other. And he succeeded in breaking a lot of hearts here. And one of those hearts was Thea Riordan's, when Micheal took sides with the Reverend, against Bavi and his people."

"Ah G-d!" Coop sighed. "When will Mickey ever learn? Once Thea gets an idea in her head, or decides to trust, or not to trust somebody, there's just no one and nothing can move her! But I think we're still missin' part of the story, Miri. You said b'fore that Aguilar saved you, and Thea and your kids from bein' carried off to Mexico by…"

"Other bands of Comancheros who _are_ dealing in a slave trade out here, these days." Miriam agreed. " He did, Cooper. Bavi and his men, his family fought off …oh it must have been four or five raiding parties, before those marauders got the message. He…adopted us, if you want to put it that way. He put us under his protection, under his 'eagle's wings', oh, months and months before his uncle died."

"But that's what I still don't understand, Miri." Coop replied, frowning. "And … I'm not sure I even want to know the answer to my next question. But I have to ask you. Why did Aguilar do that? Why would he? For the sake of his sisters and their children? For the sake of his uncle? Or was there some other reason?"

"Well, of course there was. There was Thea, Cooper." Miriam answered, as if she were explaining something any child could easily grasp. "The first time he saw her…"

"He fell in love with Thea?" Coop demanded, his frown and his eyes getting stormy "Aguilar wanted to…"

"NO!" Miriam replied frowning up at Coop. "No, that wasn't it at all. Will you let me finish? The first time Bavi and his little boy saw Thea, his son Toyarohco called out '_Kwihnai Ohapitu'_ which we later learned means 'yellow eagle' or … if you stretch a point, 'bright eagle'. Well, I'm sure you know very well how important the eagle is to the Shoshoni and the other plains tribes. And I know you must have been perfectly well aware before Bavi mentioned it, that the Comanche were part of the Shoshoni, and are still close cousins. So Bright Eagle is what Bavi and his people started calling Thea. And they said it meant she was Good Medicine for them, and they were bound to protect her, and anyone who … belonged with her. And Thea proved them right."

"But they didn't do such a fine job of protecting her, did they?" Coop asked, making a sudden,serious study of his hands, which still had Miriam's hands wrapped around them. "Aguilar and his people didn't protect Thea when it came down to it, did they? Because what you're leadin' up to tellin' us is that when this Godsey, this Reverend made all that trouble…that's when Thea … that's when she …died…"

"Why Nathaniel Kieran Anglim Cooper Smith!" Another woman's voice, throaty and warm and unmistakable called out, laughing.

"Whatever in the world makes you think that? Who in the world told you I died?"


	11. Chapter 12

SCENE TEN The Riordan/Randolph homestead, near Los Miraboles Canyon

Coop jumped to his feet, whirled halfway around and froze in place. Not three yards away framed by a half-gone doorway, stood a willowy figure, a woman with flowing hair the color of daylight and huge dark hazel eyes illuminating her thin oval face. Wrapped in a wool serape over a smoke-stained dress, she cradled an infant in her arms, and smiled at both newcomers to Los Miraboles.

"No one told Cooper that, Thea." Miriam answered her life long friend. "Like all the boys we've ever known from east Texas, he still gets all his exercise jumping to conclusions."

"Timmy?" Coop whispered, flinching when his voice came out sounding more like a fifteen year old's. "Timmy?"

"Cooper, I thought you agreed to call me Thea." the fair haired woman laughed, shaking her head. "And whatever's happened to your manners? Would you please stop gaping at me in that terribly awkward manner and introduce me properly to… that very tall young gentleman behind you?"

"I'm Duke Shannon, ma'am." the blond scout answered for his still gaping friend, grinning at the newcomer and then scooping off his hat and ducking his head politely.

"I'm delighted to know you, Mr. Shannon, despite present circumstances. I'm an old friend of Cooper's, although you might not realize that from the way he's behaving. I'm Mrs. Micheal Riordan."

"And I'm real glad to know you too, Mrs. Riordan." Duke nodded.

Miriam Randolph meanwhile reached to take the fussing infant from her friend's arms. "Thea, I think you've worked another wonder here, darling! The baby seems fine now. How's …"

" This little boy is going to be fine, mainly because he's an Etherton, a Reid and a Riordan before … all the rest. Also, his godmother, his momma and I, and I have to believe a lot more of our folks who are up in Glory now just wouldn't have it any other way, despite all the trouble. And …she finally managed to nod off for a little while, Miri. Toya's rocking her himself." Thea answered wearily.

"So we won't need Missus Beth's rocking chair just at the moment. But I'm glad to see it didn't go up in the fire. I'd so hate to lose that bit of home. There's so little left here… so little…" The fair haired woman said and began to lose her balance, until Coop caught her strongly in his arms.

"Timm… Thea, it's wonderful to see you!" Coop finally said when he caught his own breath."It's just … wonderful. When I saw all that smoke going up out of here, and remembered that this was the part of the country you and Mickey came out to… Well, I guess I … I did get kinda worried. But you look… grand, Thea, just grand."

"I look an absolute, absolute fright, Cooper!" Thea laughed, running one hand back over her hair. "But with plenty of good reasons, all of which will no doubt be explained to you at some point. I'm just a tad bit wearied out, at the moment. Miri, do we have any coffee left at all? I'd love some and I know Micky will want some too when she wakes up, with about a quarter cup of sugar!"

"Coffee, for Micky? Thea are you sure that will be good for the baby?" Miri asked, peering at the tiny one in her arms.

"It will be fine, if it's more milk and sugar than coffee." Thea answered. "Why don't we sit a spell, and you can tell us all the trouble you've gotten into lately, Cooper."

"Well, that might take a while, Thea." Coop shook his head, helping Thea to sit down before he did likewise beside her. "So maybe the telling should wait till we can get you safe away from here."

"Uh-oh!" Miriam Randolph exclaimed softly. "Now he's done it."

"Done what exactly?" Duke asked.

"He's kicked over the hornet's nest." Miriam replied, rolling her eyes towards Glory.

"Coop's always seemed to have a real knack for doing that, as long as I've known him." Duke chuckled. "So, are you saying, Miriam that he's always been … gifted in that way?"

"Always." Miriam nodded. "And if Thea weren't worn down almost to a nubbin herself right now, the hornets would already be swarming all over him!"

Duke turned to glance at his friend and Thea Riordan. The fair haired woman's dark, wide eyes were certainly not smiling at Coop. Instead she seemed to be stunned by what the black haired scout so matter of factly suggested.

"Cooper, what can you possibly be thinking?" Thea finally exclaimed. "Miri, did you not explain the present circumstances to this thick headed, over-eager, over-protective east Texan would-be hero of ours?"

"There hasn't been time for a lot of explanations, Thea." Miriam shook her head. "We had some …company drop by for a short while and it hasn't been even three quarters of an hour since they left… the company, that is. And I wasn't sure you'd want an explanation given … just now. And before you ask, I didn't see or hear either Mickey or Eli among those visitors, darling. So I have to believe they've parted company with those other… gentlemen."

"You're such a defiant, obdurate optimist Miriam Randolph. And I love you for it." Thea smiled. "Everyone does. But I suppose this explanation is mostly mine to give, supposing we have the rest of the evening to talk and catch up and so on and so forth. I'd love to have Missus Beth's rocker to sit in while I give it, and something … anything at all, even a bit of cornbread to munch on."

Coop stood up and offered a half smile. "I'll fetch you the rocker, Thea, and hunt you up anything you'd like for supper."

"There's no need for you to provide anything here, Smith." Joaquin Aguilar insisted, joining them, setting the old rocking chair between Coop and Thea. "We're a family here. We take care of one another_. Mi prima_, here's the chair, and some empanadas. Senores, you are welcome to eat with us, having helped to defend this family and what's left of this hacienda. We are not savages, as I hope you understand now, we acknowledge and thank those who help us … as you Yanquis say, live to fight another day."

"_Bavi, primo, calme, por favor." _Thea asked, sitting on the rocker as regally as any queen on her throne, Coop thought. "Please, calm down, brother. How was Cooper to know, much less understand our rather unique familia when he and his friend arrived here in the midst of all this turmoil? And you calm down too, Cooper, will you please? How was Bavi to understand, much less to know that you and I and Miriam, Eli and Micheal have been friends for just about …ever, when he just met you?"

Coop relaxed his stance and pushed the frown off his face with an unmistakable effort. "Reckon he couldn't know that, Thea." the scout nodded. "No offense meant, Aguilar."

"None taken." the Comanchero leader nodded and then turned to shake his head at Thea. " But now, _mi estimada prima,_ will you eat and rest a while? I don't wish to see you make yourself ill from weariness and worry."

"I'm fine, _mi estimado primo._" Thea smiled and took some of the food offered. "Except for being very hungry. Well, whatever's the matter now, Cooper?"

"Just one more thing I don't understand, Thea." Coop shrugged, looking at his hands so as not to look at Thea for a moment. "Why do you call him primo? Why does he call you prima? Doesn't primo mean cousin?"

"It does. And we call each other cousins because Bavi's dear, dear uncle adopted me as his daughter when he was dying and named me Bright Eagle Woman." Thea laughed tiredly. "And that was only the beginning. Bavi's right, we're all one family here, now. We've helped each other survive all sorts of terrible times, as a family. We tried to make this place, this part of the country, this hacienda a home for all of us, and for anyone who … felt as we did, that they were … uprooted, homeless, and alone in the world. I know you understand that feeling, Cooper. You told me you felt just that way when you came home after the War ended, back to Nacogdoches."

"Yeah. I did. So did a lot of folks. But Thea, you can't stay here." Coop insisted. Even if those raiders weren't gonna come back again and again until they run you out or starve you out… There's the Army and …"

"There's the latest treaty, that says there are to be no white settlements in the _Comancheria."_ Thea finished, giving Coop a stubborn smile he knew all too well. "But that doesn't apply to us, not any longer, Cooper. As Bavi said, as I just said, we're a family here. _Somos una familia_. And this is our home_, esto es nuestra casa._ So we're definitely staying. I won't move so much as one yard from the place I buried my son Asher Isaiah three years ago, the place my little grandson was just born this day. Nor will Miriam and I go anywhere at all without our husbands."

Coop knew he was staring at Thea again. He could feel his jaw dropping towards the crumbling adobe and half burned timbers around his feet. Thea was a good two years younger than than the scout.

"Cooper Smith, if you're staring at me again because you think I'm not old enough to become a grandmother, then I'm flattered." Thea Riordan smiled, as always seeming to read her former beau's mind.

"And back in east Texas, I know a proper Southern lady wouldn't dream of discussing matters concerning childbirth with anyone but other married women. But out here, well, things are quite different in a great many ways. And most of those differences I don't simply accept, I don't just approve, I cherish. That being said, I know you're wanting to ask me at least a few score more questions, well, go ahead."

"Thea," Coop hesitated visibly, looking down and away for a moment. Then he trained his blue-sky eyes on the face of the woman who he loved years ago. "Thea, you've been married to Mickey Riordan for quite a while now. You've borne him three chlidren. And I'm … I'm awfully sad to hear you lost young Ash, truly. I'm sorry. But whatever goes on with your family is really none of my business, and I really do … I really know that. I … I only want you to be well, to…to be safe and to be happy. I …I always have."

"Now you sound like your dear Daddy, a true Texas gentleman, if ever there was one, even if he grew up mostly in Tennessee." Thea chuckled softly. "But we're friends, we're good friends. And we have been for so long, Cooper, I can't put you off with polite pretenses and nonsense like that. I know you're only here now because you thought Mickey and I might be in some sort of trouble, when you saw all the smoke from the fire. Well, we have been in trouble here, more times than I'd care to count.

And I'd have to guess that Miri's been telling you about the so-called Reverend Godsey, a man we took care of, befriended and believed, when he came out of the desert, barely alive, several years ago. And for doing so, we got back nothing but trouble, dissension, lies and …worse… And just when I thought surely he'd done his worst, with all the quarrels and the divisions the Reverend stirred up between Micheal and Bavi … between Eli and Micheal, this Godsey…started a whole new campaign!" Thea was the one who looked away now, turning her wide eyes on the baby in her arms, as if to remind herself of something, Coop thought.

"What did he do, Thea? Did this Godsey harm you or Miri?" Coop demanded to know.

Thea looked from Cooper to Miriam and back and shook her head. Her eyes shone with tears and her voice was shaking, but she went on. "I don't know if I can answer your question, Cooper. I don't know if I can even say the words! That man, that 'Reverend' seems to be the polar, exact opposite of what anyone would think a man of G-d would be! Instead of peace and good will and compassion, he preaches hatred, war and retribution. Instead of belief in a loving G-d, even though G-d's love is something we can't understand, the Reverend only wants to talk about fire and brimstone!" Thea shook her head and sighed and put one hand up to her head.

"We saved his life, Cooper. Or so we believed. Now I'm not sure he was in as desperate circumstances as he led us to think. And that's only partly because within a few months of his arrival, Reverend Godsey's troop began to make themselves known in this part of the country. Only at first we knew nothing of his connection to the those horrid raiders, those renegades. And then the lies began to come, thicker and faster and faster and more all the time. Those men were his congregation, his disciples, he said at one point. They were his students, or men he'd saved from one awful place or another on his way to Colorado territory, he said another time. And most recently, he told Micheal the men who came to his 'church' and his 'troop' were just like my husband, uprooted, disenfranchised and discontented after the War. "

" But beyond that, all the while he was staying among us, ranting on about one such notion or another, the Reverend Godsey was constantly, constantly attacking us from within! He scared all the children so badly they've had nightmares for months! He lied and blamed and spread distrust among all of us, but most of all to …to my own Micheal, who it seems was the most vulnerable of our whole family here to just that kind of poison-talk. He did all he could to ruin the family and the home we've built together, all of us here. He tried to convince my own Micaela Elizabeth, my own daughter that because our Ash wasn't baptized _in Godsey's church, in_

_Godsey's way, _her dearest brother was lost to us forever … doomed to Perdition at the age of ten! And when she wasn't entirely convinced, that terrible man, that so called Reverend…" Thea broke down in sobs now, unable to go on.

"Thea…Miri, what…" Coop said and helplessly turned to Miriam Randolph, and was shocked again by the bitter rage in his friend's big hazel eyes.

"Godsey … What you have to understand about the Reverend Godsey, Cooper is that he's a complete, utter coward, and a fraud! He's no Man of G-d! We found out he never has been! He's no more a Christian minister than I am the Man in the Moon!" Miri answered, pulling Thea and the newborn baby boy into her arms.

"He's never had a church or a posting to any church but the one he invented himself. He's never been ordained a minister by anyone, anywhere at all. And in fact, we finally learned recently that he's been thrown out of scores and dozens, maybe hundreds of towns further east for defrauding and stealing from people there. Calling himself a minister, a man of the cloth is all part of a land-grabbing scheme! Claiming he's come west to 'cleanse the wilderness' as a mission from G-d is just the starting point for all the terrible things he does and all the lies and hatred he spreads. And demanding he's here _to save_ _our children,_ our 'dear, white chldren' from the savages who should be swept from these lands, that's the worst lie of all, as we've learned to our horror and grief!" Miriam took a deep breath, pressed her lips together and then went on, looking as if, Coop thought, she had to get this out now or she never would.

"Godsey is a man who lies when the truth would sound better, old friend. He's someone who would rather sow dissension than sow grain for bread to feed the hungry and the poor. And he's a weakling, Cooper. He's so afraid of so many things and so many people that he only seeks out those who are weaker and more vulnerable than he is himself to do his worst damage to. You asked if Godsey harmed Thea or me… Well, the answer is no, not directly. We're too strong for his tricks and too smart for his traps. And coming out here, living as we have, as we do has only made us each stronger that way. But I expect you could guess that."

"Women from Nacogdoches are the wisest, the sweetest, the kindest and the strongest, not to mention the handsomest I've ever known." Coop agreed, with half a crooked grin stretching across his face.

"Well of course that's the simple truth of the matter." Miriam laughed. "And of course we're the ones who taught you to understand that from the time you could toddle about. So, finding Thea and me too much to deal with, the Reverend Mr. Godsey set his sights elsewhere. He targeted my Nell, and Thea's Micky, our eldest girls! He flattered and cajoled them and puffed them up like a couple of kites on a windy day! He scared them and shook them up and confused them both so badly our two daughters, our two precious girls hardly knew which way to turn! But Godsey knew precisely, precisely ..where he wanted them to turn. And he got them to keep it all secret for most of the last year. He wanted those two girls to turn away from us… away from their family and … and turn to him."

Coop groaned, feeling sick as he realized what these two young mothers were struggling to say, without saying the exact words. Then he glanced at Micky again. If things had gone differently, years ago, she could have been his daughter.

"And Micheal… He's still riding with this… Godsey right now?" the black haired scout finally managed to ask.

"Micheal doesn't yet know the whole truth of the matter, Cooper. My poor little Micky only told me a short while ago." Thea whispered, looking up from where she'd laid her head against her best friend's shoulder to weep. "Godsey told yet another lie, a big one, but a lie small enough for Micheal to decide he could believe it. And of course he'd rather believe his newest role model, his current mentor, his latest commanding officer than believe in our family, here. So Micheal chose to believe Godsey's latest lie; that Bavi's son, Toya harmed our daughter, when nothing could be further from the truth!"

"And that's what the attacks Godsey's raiders are making on this place are all about?" Duke asked, feeling as revolted as his Coop looked about now.

"Yes. Godsey couldn't find any other way to turn our family inside out, to turn us against one another." Miriam Randolph agreed. "Nothing else worked. Nothing else he said or did even came close."

"If I truly believed some young buck … harmed my daughter, if I ever have one, I guess I'd … No, I know I'd do the same." Duke nodded. Then the tall blond scout looked back over the wall just behind him and shouted. "Everybody, get down! Coop, Aguilar, get these women to cover! I think some of those raiders are headed back this way. And they're not doing a very good job of soft-footing it, or they're arguing with each other, or maybe they want us to know they're coming."


	12. Chapter 13

SCENE ELEVEN The Riordan/Randolph homestead, near Los Miraboles Canyon

"Or maybe you're just guessin' there, Duke." Coop quipped, as he helped Thea to move behind a thick wooden overturned table. "Its alright to admit you just don't know."

"Oh, thanks for the good advice, Buddy." Duke groaned. "Thanks a whole lot."

"Don't mention it." Coop wearily grinned.

"Hombres, perhaps we should wait for a better time to laugh at our troubles." Joaquin Aguilar suggested, as he pulled Miriam to a relatively safer spot beside the only remaining door in the main room of the hacienda.

"He just might be right about that, Coop. What do you think?" Duike asked, taking a new post between Miriam Randolph and the outer wall.

"Well, I don't know." Coop shook his head, smiling a bit grimly. "In the Old Ragged First, that bein' what we called the First Texas, we used to say better laugh while you've got the breath in you for it, cause otherwise you might have to use it to weep."

"_Guarda silencio ahora_." Joaquin Aguilar whispered to his familia and the two strangers who'd been thrown into the dangerous business of defending his home. "_Mantenga a todos en silencio, por favor._ Be silent now. Everyone keep silence, please. Thea, you said Toya was staying with Micaela. But what of young Elenora, where is she? Is she any better?"

"We're all fine now, Bavi." a girl's voice softly answered from the same broken doorway Thea Riordan had walked through a short while ago. All in the main room turned to find a trio of young people close together. A broad shouldered boy whose black hair and darker coloring made him look like a young Comanche buck in 'white man's' clothing carried in his arms a petite woman child with thick, pale blonde hair in a loose braid falling down one shoulder, her wide hazel eyes lighting a heart shaped face that was otherwise identical to Thea's. She wore a loose fitting blouse and skirt, with a serape around her narrow shoulders. And to his right was the girl who'd answered Aguilar, a slightly taller golden redhead, with bright green eyes and mobile features like Miriam Randolph's set in an oval face. This second girl wore a wide skirt, split and seamed for riding, a worn and faded denim shirt and jacket, with a wide brimmed hat hanging down her back from a thong that circled her neck.

"Well, we're all better. Well, we will be when everyone here is safe again." the second girl said. Duke Shannon studied these three and saw that they could only be Aguilar's, Thea's and Miriam's eldest children. The scout had no question he was looking at Toya Aguilar, Micky Riordan and Nell Randolph.

" Nell, sweetheart!" Miriam Randolph exclaimed. "I thought we agreed all of you would be safest back in the still room. I thought we agreed Micky shouldn't get up at all, not anytime soon. Toya, what were you thinking, bringing the girls in here?"

"He was thinking what we told him, that we'd come crawling or jumping or skipping or running across the house without his help if we had to." Micaela Riordan replied, with a stubborn, self satisfied smile very much like her mother's, Coop thought.

"And I was thinking that little boy of mine must be hungry again by this time. But Nell, oh, Nell was just thinking she wanted to see who came riding in here to help us, like heroes out of the blue, just when we needed help most. That's why she's goin' to be a great writer someday, I guess. She's got such a wild imagination."

"But that isn't all, Bavi, momma, Missus Thea. I had to come and … tell you how terrible… " Nell Randolph said, tearing up and swallowing before she went on. "How awfully terrible I feel. I didn't understand. I just didn't understand at all, how terribly Anth… the Reverend lied! And … and… I feel like the most awful, most dreadful fool, and all of you could have been … could have died… And I just didn't understand … That's why I … that's why I started the fire. I'm so dreadfully sorry! I'm so awfully glad no one here got hurt!"

"Well so are we, darling girl." Thea said, going at once to the distraught youngster and folding her into her arms. "But here's the thing, Nell. If you hadn't done that, and if you hadn't managed to make a whole, whole lot more smoke than you did fire, our old friend Cooper and his friend Mr. Shannon might never have found us here. And then they wouldn't have come to help, as Micaela said, just when we needed help most. "

"Your momma's absolutely, absolutely right about that." Coop quietly offered, standing up and crossing to address the girl. "And excuse me please, for not introducing myself, Miss Randolph, I'm Cooper Smith, an old friend of yours and Micaela's parents. If my partner, Mr. Shannon and I hadn't spotted that column of smoke coming up from this hacienda, we would have had no idea anyone was here, maybe in trouble. You see I didn't remember, not right off that Los Miraboles canyon was so close to the place your Daddy and Micaela's chose to settle in, after the War ended."

"Th-thank you for saying that, Mr. Smith. Thank you." Nell answered, ducking her head shyly and then peering back up at Coop with obvious admiration. "But I don't understand. Why in heaven's name would you, or anyone come riding through this part of the country if they didn't need to?"

"Eleanor Gillian Rachel Randolph!" Miriam Randolph exclaimed, blushing hotly, as her daughter followed suit. "Where are your manners, Missy? You know you shouldn't be prying into grown folks business!"

"No, it's alright, Mir… Missus Randolph." Coop interjected, grinning at Miriam and then at the girl. "It's a good question, shows a lively curiosity and a quick mind. Miss Eleanor, Duke and I, we did need to ride down into this part of the territory, to find another pass for the wagon train to take on its way to California. The northern passes are gonna be blocked by the time we get to them, because we had a lot of delays on the trail this season. So between our problems and yours, it seems as though what was a lot of trouble brought us to where we were needed, to help out your family here."

"Oh." the girl answered, and ducked her head again. "Oh, well… thank you… Oh, now I remember! You're from Nacogdoches, too, just like Daddy and momma and Micky's parents! You went with Daddy and Cousin Micheal to join the First Texas in the War! You're a real Texas hero! And your … your grandaddy was old Reverend Nathaniel… who everybody looked up to, like they did my granddaddy Reverend Asher… I … guess… I guess that's how … Mr. Godsey tricked … me and Micky… He said he was a man of G-d, a minister… and … then…and … then…"

"Eleanor, Eleanor, darling girl, please listen to me. "Thea interrupted as the girl seemed on the verge of hysterics. "Mr. Godsey lied to and tricked all of us, Nell, so you needn't feel so awfully terrible. He fooled everyone here, all of the grown folks, too. We thought, at first, he was someone who needed our help. We believed he was a good man who truly wanted to repay our kindness, although there was no need. Now, if you three are bound and determined to stay out here with us, then you'll need to do your share, just as always. Toya, help Micaela to rest as comfortably as she can… over by the west wall should be fine. Nell, you're as good a shot as your Daddy, with the same keen eyesight Elias has. And I know he'll be climbing over one of these back walls just anytime now, so lets find you a safe lookout."

"Oh, I've got that all picked out already, Missus Thea, ma'am." Nell replied. "I know just what to do and just where to keep lookout from. I promise, I won't let anyone get past me! … I mean, that is, without signalling the way Daddy showed me."

"Good girl." Thea smiled and hugged Nell fiercely for a moment. "I know last year your momma and I were always worrying and scolding about you still being such a tomboy. But we were only…"

"You were only trying to remind me that I still have to grow up to be a lady." the redhead nodded. "Especially when I wanted to crop my hair short, like momma's instead putting it up, like a real lady. I couldn't understand why it made momma sad to have hers cut. I do now, even if mine still seems a nuisance, sometimes." Nell shrugged and began to tuck her hair up into her big hat and then blushed brightly. "It's just a habit with me, by this time, I reck… I suppose, pushing it out of my way. Scuse me, please, Mr. Smith, scuse me, Missus Thea, I'll go stand lookout now."

"That's my girl." Thea smiled tiredly as the redhead strode across the main part of the ruined hacienda and climbed up into a narrow stairwell.

"So Nell's keeping watch. And Toya's getting ready to fight the raiders. But I'm supposed to do nothing now except to rest and feed the baby, while we all worry and wonder how Poppa is; and when he'll come back, and when he'll come back to his senses too?" Micaela asked, her smile replaced by a petulant frown.

"No, Micaela." Miriam answered, smiling at Thea's daughter. "You're supposed to rest and feed that baby and take care of him, make sure he's comfortable and that he feels absolutely safe. He's your responsibility and he needs you terribly. And you might want to think about a name for the mite, while you're at it. And while you do all that, you, along with the rest of us will be hoping and praying your Poppa will be hopping over that back wall alongside Nell's Daddy, just as soon as he can. Micheal's a fine, good hearted man, we all know that and we all love him for it. And anyone can be led astray for awhile. His temper and his pride just get the better of him at times. But I don't expect you to understand that, sweetheart. You're only …"

"I'm fifteen this August, Cousin Miri." Micky insisted. "And I have the same temper as Poppa, I'm afraid, so I do understand. But I love you all so awfully, I know he does, too. I just know he does!"

"Of course he does, Micaela." Thea immediately agreed walking over to her daughter as Toya helped Micky to lay on a bed made of numerous blankets. "Your Daddy has loved you and your brothers with all his heart since the moment you were born, no, from the moment we knew we… would have a child. He's going to love this little baby boy just as much, too. And he loves me, Miriam and Elias the same way, and has since the days when we were growing up together. He only got confused and then got angry. And …Mr. Godsey helped him get even more confused and angrier still with all his deceptions. That will pass. It will. I know it. It always has before when Micheal got a … little mixed up. It will again, this time." Thea turned away slightly, so it was only Coop who heard her determined whisper.

" _It simply has to."_

"The baby's got a name, already." Micaela announced, swallowing nervously before she went on. "Maybe I was too tired out … before to tell you, momma. My little boy's name is Aidan Nevin Tierney…Riordan… And when I'm … eighteen, his last name will be changed … if all goes as … Toya and I hope… hope for… His last name will be changed to …to Aguilar."

"Aidan Nevin Tierney." Thea repeated. "_Mauvoreen, darling girl,_ that's a grand name, a truly grand one! That was the name…"

"…of Daddy's momma's father. I know, momma. I think Daddy will like it. I think he will say that's a good, strong, proud name for a little boy. I thought it might help…help him to love… to love my baby." Micaela answered, her voice trembling, her arms shaking a bit with adrenalin and exhaustion.

"Micky, of course your Daddy will love this baby." Thea insisted, quickly sitting beside her daughter to lend her support. "How could he not? The tyke's his own flesh and blood, after all. And just look at the tiny darling boy! Just look at the way he's already holding all of our hearts in his hands! Micky, let me take our Aidan for a moment, just a moment. He's getting a little fidgety and fussy. We need to find

a curtain of some sort, and a soft bit of cloth and this morning's milk pail to show your son how to get his supper. Maybe Nell can leave off her watching for a moment…"

"I'll get her, Thea." Miriam agreed turning towards the lookout post her daughter had taken. "Nell, sweetheart, come on down from your perch now. We need another pair of hands… and eyes. Nell? Nell? Eleanor … please answer me, sweetheart. Nell? Speaking of tired out mites, I think Nell must have fallen asleep up there herself. I'll just go check on her and bring back what Micky needs myself."

Watching Miriam climb the narrow staircase set into the east wall, Coop frowned. Thea and Miri and their kids, as well as the rest of their family here were still in tremendous danger. And Eli and Micheal were his long time friends too. He knew he had to do something besides sitting here, waiting for all this trouble to pass.

"You still love that hotheaded, mixed up Irishman of yours, don't you, Thea?" Coop asked, earning a look of surprise from the willowy blonde.

"Yes, Cooper. I love Micheal with all of my being. I always will. He's … the bright love of my heart. He's my soul's friend, my better self… Well, he is, when he's not so bitterly confused and sad. I know he's been broken hearted ever since our Asher died. I have been too. But Micheal's taken longer to heal that's all. I will always keep to him, to the choices and the promises I've made." Thea nodded.

"And I know my choices hurt you terribly, when we were all young, back in Nacogdoches, before the War began. And I hope it doesn't hurt you still, now. But no matter what, I always will love Micheal Riordan. If he was …gone from my life it would tear me in pieces. I would break my heart grieving, I know that, because I've almost lost him three times over the years. But I'd go on for the sake of our children and for the sake of our home here, and he'd do the same in my place. They've been both our dream and our strength, Cooper. And I think you understand that. You've always been a believer in fine, far-reaching dreams, just like your Daddy was."

"Have I?" Coop asked her and shrugged, working at keeping his expression neutral and his voice calm. "Maybe so. Well, thanks, Thea, thanks for answering that. G-d knows I had no right to ask. And I'm sorry. I'm real sorry for even seemin' to cast doubt. That was wrong. I know you better than that. You've never had a divided heart, not for even one instant in your life. And that tells me just what I've got to do."

Thea kept her wide hazel eyes on the scout's face for another moment and then shook her head. "Cooper Smith, what are you all set to do now? I know that look. You can't! You absolutely cannot do that now! We need you here!"

"No, Thea. You and your children and your little grandson need Micheal back here with you. Miriam and Nell and her brothers need Eli with them safely back behind these walls. And we need all the available manpower we can bring back behind what's left of these walls. And we need it before those raiders come back. And they'll be back, make no mistake, most likely just at dawn." Coop argued, setting his rifle down and making a swift inventory of his revolver and gunbelt and knife.

"Cooper, I won't have you doing this!" Thea insisted, frowning at the scout. "I tell you I simply won't have it! Micheal will come back to us on his own. I know that. And I know he'll do that very soon. He cherishes his children and our home here. He wants us to have all our dreams, if we can. He just needed some time to cool his temper and think, quietly, by himself. So to put yourself at risk at this point would be …a wasted effort, that's all. Why can't you see that? What's bringing up that old recklessness of yours that you told me yourself was pretty well burnt out of you by the War? What's going on in that prideful Irish-Welsh head of yours?"

Coop winced at that. Even though she hadn't seen him in years, Thea still knew him inside and out. And she wouldn't take no for an answer, or anything less than the absolute truth. And she wouldn't take her wide hazel eyes from his face. So Coop knew he would have to answer her before she let him take so much as one step, before she let him make even one move to go. Only one other person he'd known in his life had been able to hold Coop in place that way. And his mother, Beth Smith was gone to Glory now a long while. Maybe Miri Randolph was right. Maybe Thea had learned more from 'Missus Beth' as half of east Texas used to call his mother, than anyone ever guessed, back in the day.

"Thea," Coop sighed. "when Duke and I found Miri and the twins here… a few hours ago, well… you already know I thought you were …gone. And then you walked in that door… And I saw you… alive and well. And … you were…so wonderful to see… And I felt… well..I thought… I …well, it seems like I might as well have been fifteen years old, all over again!"

"Fifteen and a half, you used to always insist, when you were courting me, anyhow." Thea smiled.

"Fifteen and a half, and crazy, just crazy in love…" Coop shook his head feeling his face growing hot from his shirt collar up to his crown. "It all came back on me, I guess when I saw you again. But we're not those two kids anymore. We can't go back to those times. So I can't…I can't and I won't disrespect you… I can't even … In fact, I'm truly ashamed that I started to … get angry with Micheal, as if we were still a couple of fool boys, chasin' a beautiful dream. I'm ashamed, that's what I am, Thea, that even for a second or two…I let myself imagine…"

Thea put one long hand up to Coop's face and shook her head, making her long, golden hair dance around her face in the same way it had done when she was a girl, years ago. "So you think you have to make that up to me?" She asked Coop very quietly. "You think you have to bring Micheal back to me now, to make amends for things you neither said nor acted upon?"

"You know what your grandfather Reid and my grandfather Cooper, my namesake would both say to that." Coop answered, in the same quiet tone. "Thinking something like that is _just as wrong_ as saying or doing anything about it, that's what they'd say. That's what they believed and taught. And so 'm … not only a danged fool, 'm standing here trying my best to make amends, not excuses."

"Even when I'm standing here telling you there's no need?" Thea probed. "Even when I'm telling you I believe things will work out the way that they're meant to. Because I do, because they always have. So, you mustn't do this, Cooper, not for my sake, not for Micheal's … not for those reasons. You mustn't go at all, in fact. You simply mustn't go."

"Go? Go where? Hold it right there!" Duke protested, striding over to join the old friends. "I don't say we don't need to send someone after those two old friends of yours. But what makes you think you're the one to be going over that wall? What if Riordan doesn't take so well to seeing one of his wife's former beaus out there? What makes you think he'll come back here with you?"

Coop started to give his friends a tired half grin. "You know you're just makin' my argument for me, don't you? If Mickey Riordan doesn't want me to start chasin' after Thea, then he'd better chase me back here and act like her husband, now hadn't he? And while I'm at it, maybe I should tell Eli Randolph when I see him, about how my friend Duke has been makin' eyes at his Miri all day long!"

"Cooper!" Miriam Randolph exclaimed, returning to the center of the long, wide room. "Cooper!"

" 'm sorry, Miri. I was just plaguing Duke. I didn't mean anything by it, honest. You know that, don't you, Miri?" Coop answered without really looking at his friend, just at first.

"Nathaniel Kieran Anglim Cooper Smith, hush! Stop jabbering on and listen to me, please!" Miriam cried out.

"What's wrong, _Pia_?" Aguilar demanded, turning the young mother to face him. Coop turned towards Miriam now and rushed to her. The brunette was pale as milk and shaking, alone and empty handed.

"Where's little Eleanor?" Coop asked.

"That's what I'm trying to tell you!" Miriam replied. "Nell's not at her lookout window. She's not up there. She's not back in the summer kitchen, where Eli set up another watch point. She's not in the stables, what's left of them. She's not asleep in the room we set up in the back for the children. She's not playing with the twins. And she's not down here with Micky! I can't find her, Bavi! Don't you understand? I can't find Nell! My daughter's gone missing!"

Aguilar, Duke and Coop all groaned, hearing Miriam's announcement. The rest of the Comanchero band muttered angrily, some whispering that one of the raiders must have entered the compound and abducted Nell Randolph.

"If Godsey has taken Eleanora, I will let him live just long enough to regret he ever came to Los Miraboles canyon!" The Comanchero leader growled.

"And we'll be glad to help you with that." Coop answered. "Right after we make sure Nell's back with her family, safe and sound."

Then Aguilar's son, Toyarohco stood up but stayed next to Micaela Riordan. "_Mi padre,"_ the boy said, when everyone else had quieted. "Senores, I do not believe any of the Big Liar's band came in here or took Nell away."

"What makes you think they didn't, Toya?" Duke asked.

"Because, _senor _Duke, she wants always to do what she's been told only men do. She wants to be a hunter, a fighter, even a warrior. Also, she rides and shoots as well as any man here, and better than some. Also she was much ashamed of setting the fire. So I believe she's gone to help _Senores_ Elias and Miguel return home before there can be more fighting."

"Oh, My Dear Lord!" Miriam Randolph whispered, folding her arms tightly around herself as if for comfort. "Bavi, I think he's right. That's exactly what Nell would want to do now! Oh, my precious girl! My baby!"

"I think Eleanora has proven she's not an infant any longer,_ Pia_." Aguilar replied, pulling Miriam into a brotherly embrace, before he turned to address his cohort. "But we will not allow her to be harmed again by the … poor excuses for human beings Anthony Godsey leads, or by the Reverend, either. We will bring her and Elias, and Micheal home."

"_Padre,_ I will remain here with Micaela and las senoras." Toya calmly announced.

" _Si, m'ijo,_ I expected you would." Aguilar answered his son. "_Compadres,_ it is our turn to go on the attack! But with all our wits about us this time, _si_? No foolishness now, no unwise choices, no bravado, _me entiendes_? And you also, senores, do you understand me?"

"_Si, jefe." _his men answered as one voice.

"We understand." Coop answered for both himself and Duke. "Only at least one or two of us had best stay here with these women and children. What about it, Duke? Do you want to draw straws or flip me for that duty?"

Duke chuckled tiredly and wiped one long arm across his eyes. "Coop, as easy, and as tempting as it would be for me to flip you, even when you're not just as worn down as I am right now, I'll stay here. And for a good reason. I'm thinking you were partly right a minute ago. It makes more sense for you than me to go and try talking sense to Riordan. At the very least he won't shoot someone he knows on sight? Or will he?"

"Well, I'm pretty sure we had an unarmed truce between us, the last time I saw Micheal." Coop answered with the same dry humor.

"And I haven't done anything in the meantime to change that. Not that I know of. Let's ride. Thea, what in the world are you doing?" the scout demanded, staring again as Thea Riordan lifted and checked the working order of a repeating rifle.

"I'm protecting my home, and my family, Cooper." Thea answered. "What did you expect me to do, sit here, and wait and pray, and knit and quilt, and roll bandages for the menfolk when they come back all in pieces? I did more of that during the War then I ever want to again in my life! We all did, all the women in Texas and Louisiana, in Georgia and Mississippi and … well, everywhere, I'd have to guess!

Didn't Missus Beth ever talk to you about what that was like for her, and the rest of us, waiting and praying and feeling just about useless, just about worthless otherwise, back then? Don't the women who travel on that wagon train of yours know how to defend their families just as well as their men do? And if they don't know before they leave the east, don't they all learn how on their way to California? Don't they have to?"

Coop ducked his head in pure discomfort. Thea was right of course. And it was danged annoying. Worse yet, knowing Thea, she expected him to admit it.

" Yeah, yeah … figure they do…but" the black haired scout muttered.

"But they aren't hapless, helpless simpering Southern belles like Miriam, Gillian and I were all supposed to grow into?" Thea challenged, as she set the rifle down to pull Miriam into a hug. "How do you like this big, brave antique-Southern-Sir-Walter-Scott-gentleman-hero of ours, Miri? He thinks we should be hiding in the root cellar with pistols, maybe, with only one shot in them… to prevent 'the worst' from happening to us."

"I think he hasn't had time to look around and realize that Los Miraboles doesn't have a root cellar, Thea." Miriam answered, almost smiling. "And I think Mr. Shannon should go with Cooper and Joaquin now, or stay here as he chooses, not because we need a male protector."

"He'll stay." Coop announced a little more sternly than he meant to.

"Oh, Coop's right, just this once. I'll stay, if you ladies will allow it." Duke amended. "I like your company a whole lot better. You'd best get headed out now, Buddy."

"_Vayamos, compadres."_ Joaquin Aguilar ordered, leading his men out, with Cooper Smith striding right beside him.


	13. Chapter 14

SCENE TWELVE outside the Riordan-Randolph settlement near Los Miraboles canyon

Micheal Riordan didn't know what he should do any longer. For most of the last three years, since his son Asher died, Riordan had been drifting, lost, confused and bitterly angry.

"The light of my eyes, you were, Asher son." Micheal whispered to the vivid, loving young spirit that still seemed to haunt him. "The light of my eyes! And yet the Almighty saw fit to take you, as He never took the sacrifice Abraham was willing to make of his son, Isaac!

Why would He do that? Why would He take you, my fine, strong young boyyo, Asher, and leave your brother Timmy to struggle on

with his burdensome asthma that only living in this blasted, burning wasteland seems to ease at all, at all? Where's the sense in that? There's none to be found, I tell you!"

_M' athair, my father. _Asher's vibrant voice seemed to answer, as Riordan sat watch for the Reverend's encampment._ M'athair, ni thuigim. I don't understand. I thought you'd found the answers you needed to that conundrum. I thought you'd found some peace with it, with my goin'…Didn't you always teach me what your grandfather taught you? __Dá mbeifeá chomh láidir le crann darach, gheobhadh an bás an ceann is fearr ort. If you are as strong as an oak tree, death will still vanquish you._

"And he taught me '_Maireann croi __éadrom i bhfad. _A light heart lives longest! But you had and would have always had the wise, open heart of a child, Asher!" Micheal protested. "We all knew that. We all saw that! So for you to be taken so untimely…"

_No one knows their time, father. No one but the Lord G-d can possibly know that. That's one of things you taught me. __ So when someone comes to die, surely its as and when the Good Lord intended always. But I still don't understand, m'athair. You seemed to find a kind of peace … a sort of acceptance, you seemed to become less angry for a time. And now you're constantly railing and growling and fighting … everyone, even Cousin Eli, even Micky, even momma! Why? What happened? _The boyish voice, that Riordan knew was only an echo of his own confusion these days asked.

"I'm not!" Riordan insisted, trying to sound convincing. "I'm not the one whose always fighting. They're fighting me, every moment of every day over… everything! They're the ones who don't understand! A man loses his first born son and it has to change him, doesn't it, Asher? A man loses his heir, the one he pinned so many hopes and dreams on… and it has to make him angry, doesn't it? What kind of a man doesn't rage against a loss like that? What kind of man just lies down like a lamb to the slaughter and says…'Amen, so be it…?' What kind of father would I be to you, darling boy, if I l simply let myself … forget you, Asher Isaiah?"

"But you haven't forgotten Ash, not for even a moment, Cousin Micheal." a girl's voice answered, startling Riordan so he lept to his feet and whirled about. "You haven't, Missus Thea hasn't and neither have I forgotten Asher. None of us have, we couldn't. We all loved him so terribly, didn't we?"

"Eleanor, what in the very … what are you doing out here alone, child?" Riordan asked, blinking in surprise at Nell Randolph. The girl stood barely a yard away, wearing worn denims, boots and a dusty-wide brimmed hat, all of which she'd inherited from Asher. She stood quietly now, patiently it seemed waiting his answer to her question, all the while looking sadly up at Riordan. "Whatever possessed Miriam to let you …"

"She didn't. I slipped out, just like Ash and I always used to do, Cousin Micheal. And momma will be wanting to take a hickory switch to me for it. But I had to. I couldn't just stand around back there, waiting and hoping you or Daddy, or both would climb back over the wall, finally. I couldn't." Nell answered.

"I had to come out and find you and find Daddy and get you both home again. Because there's gonna be more fighting and shooting and because it's mostly my fault, because I was so … mixed up and sad and scared that I … I started that fire. But the thing is, it made more smoke than anything else, so it …

But it could've been so terrible! So I had to do something… now.. So I had to come out and find you both, because we need you to coe back home safe again to us. And because … you don't know it, because you're all the way out here… But you … you and Missus Thea, you have a grandbaby now, tonight. And he's so beauteous and so lively and so perfect! And Micky… she's fine, she's worn to a nub, but she's fine. And Micky named the baby already, tonight. She named him for your granddaddy, she said… She named him Aidan Nevin Tierney…Riordan. And Toya… Toyarohco … he's not the tiny mite's Daddy, Cousin Micheal… He's not, truly."

"Now, Eleanor, there's simply not any way for a girl of your years to know…" Riordan began to object, but he knew Miriam's daughter to be as rigorously honest and straightforward as her mother. "Was it Micaela who told you this tale, lass, or was it the boy, Aguilar's son?"

"Neither one, Cousin. I know the truth, because I was right there, scared half out of my wits for Micky, but I was right there when ….when… Cousin Micheal… you have to believe me. I know what happened, I was there! He… he never even tried to hide what … what he did! He … he maybe was kind of drunken, but … but.. not …He was … he still did just what he wanted to do!" Nell replied, plopping down beside Riordan where he sat on watch beside the only stand of water birch trees for miles around, her face growing hot.

"I couldn't talk about it before, Cousin Micheal… I just couldn't! But … I have to now, and you have to believe me, you have to! You have to understand I wouldn't ever, ever, ever talk about this … except it's too important now, and I have to tell the truth! And you have to believe me and come … come home, and bring Daddy home!"

"Your Daddy's already headed back towards Los Miraboles, my lass. I'm a little surprised in fact that the two of you didn't cross paths." Riordan answered, studying the girl intently in the light of his tiny cook fire.

"Now, since you say you feel you must tell me … the truth of the matter, I'll surely listen, my lass. You're Miriam's daughter and she… She never lies, not even when it might seem better somehow. But maybe this telling is something that should wait. Maybe you'd feel better telling it to your momma or … to my wife… "

"I would've but now there's no more time!" Nell insisted, fixing her eyes on Riordan's face. "Besides, momma is gonna want to switch my backside for slippin' on out here just now. So she won't be in any sort of mind to listen to me. Cousin Micheal… I'm glad you know that I'm like momma that way, that I won't tell a lie just to make things easy for me, or for anyone else. That I won't tell a lie, just never at all. And I'm not gonna tell you lies now, even though you'd probably rather …

Its… its always been Anth…the Reverend who lied. All the time, from the start. Sometimes it seems like he just can't help it. And other times it seems like its just comes as natural as breathing to him. Cousin Micheal, the Reverend, he lied to all of us… all of us all of the time, from the start." Nell said, biting her lower lip and looking down and back before she went on.

"And most of all he lied about who he is and about … what he wants… all of the time. Missus Thea, she wrote back east to find out, and so did my momma too. And it came back saying he's no kind of preacher nor minister at all. But that wasn't … That isn't what I'm telling you about now, that isn't what I come out looking for you to say. Cousin, he's a terrible, terrible, wicked man! He don't want to save anybody at all. He don't want to help anyone but himself. And I guess in one way he had to lie and lie and then lie some more. Because he wanted … to hurt people bad… He likes to hurt people, especially if they won't go his way. He likes that a whole lot, hurtin' people who say no to him, d' you see? He thinks that everyone, just everyone should just do what he wants."

"Well, Eleanor, I believe I understand some of what you're saying now, I believe so, my lass." Micheal answered quietly, hiding his growing concern and discomfort from the woman-child. "But are you sure, are you certain, my girl, that you're not … getting things mixed up, that you're not angry and hurt and getting matters all turned 'round in your head?"

"No, Cousin, I almost… I do wish I was. But the Reverend, he was drinking a fair amount… more than one time… So he wasn't being so very careful about what he said… D'you see? He didn't seem to care as much about what Micky or I thought. Maybe he thought we were just two little fool girls! Cousin, the Reverend told us both he decided to make … to make my momma and … and Missus Thea real sorry they weren't … they weren't… friends with him, not as he wished… " Nell went on, her big eyes welling with tears.

"And then he told me and Micky both that he especially wanted to make Missus Thea real sorry … even more than momma would be… And that was when he … that was when he scared me so bad, and he wanted to scare me, he truly did! He told me he'd ruin me, even if he didn't … He told me he'd make sure everyone believed that he…harmed me, even if he didn't do anything more… than he had…by, by that time!

He told me I'd go to Perdition for certain sure, if I disobeyed him or if I … what was that… oh, if I defied him, he said. He told me I'd burn there forever if I … if I … betrayed his trust! He said he was a preacher of G-d, so anything he did, it was what G-d wanted done. So he said that anyone, just anyone at all who didn't do what he wanted… what the Reverend he wanted them to do, would go straight into Perdition, just forever and forever, when they died! And he said I was already likely goin' there, anyhow, cause I'd told him… How I … how I loved… Ash… How I still dreamt … about Ash… and how we might've been … in love someday…"

Riordan sat bolt upright now staring at the girl. "Eleanor, Eleanor, lass, I have to ask you .. I have to ask. Do you understand what you're saying to me now? Do you understand what these words … What these words can mean at all, at all?" he asked.

" I do, Cousin. I wish I didn't know anything like this at all, but I do! And I was … I was so scared! And I was so… so awfully, terribly ashamed! So I just sat there, like a china doll on a shelf. I just sat there, afraid to move an inch or even make one sound. And then he … he hurt Micky, he hurt her so much… He harmed her… so very badly then… The Reverend did! And then he told her and me all over again that we didn't dare let anyone know about it. He told us both, Micky and me that we'd be doomed… and ruined, of course… and all our families would be … so terribly ashamed! And they'd have, you'd have to … just cast us away… just cast us out, just like Hagar in the desert, to die with her … with her baby boy!

And then he laughed! He started in laughing! And he said what he done then was to make sure Missus Thea would be so, so horribly sorry … Cause she … she wouldn't ever, ever, ever at all do what he wanted her to do. He said she would know what he done and why he done so, and she would be so terribly sad and ashamed! He said she could've have … He said she'd know forever and all that she should've done … what he wanted her to do. So it would always all be her fault, what he done … to…to Micky… Missus Thea's fault, d' you see?"

"Oh Dear Mother of G-d!" Riordan whispered, pressing one hand to his head, his own wide eyes brightening with tears. "Dear, Holy Mother of G-d! What an absolute, absolute fool I've been! Eleanor, let's go find that father of yours and get on …" the Irishman started to say when the clatter of rifle fire sounded, from the other side of 'the Reverend's' camp.

"…get on home?" Nell finished. "Maybe we should, Cousin. Or maybe we should go see if that's my Daddy and Bavi and Mr. Cooper and his friend going after the Reverend now for themselves? Maybe we should go and see if we can't help them a bit?"

"You are very like your mother, my lass, do you know that?" Riordan chuckled, shaking his head. "Brave as bears and as smart as a whip. But Miriam would not be for forgivin' me anytime soon if any harm… well if … any more harm came to her darlin' girl."

"Then I'll have to be careful." Nell answered. "Won't I now? I can't just sit here like a china doll, not when I'm already here!"

A weary half grin stretched across Riordan's face. "Alright now, my lass. Just see that you don't go about getting me in double-Dutch with both your momma and your Daddy tonight! I think what we'd best do is provide our friends, assuming that's them across the camp, and not the Army ridin' in to drive us all out of the territory. Well, assuming it's our friends… our family… I'm thinkin' a diversion might be just what they need. Now then my girl, listen well, very well to me."

The rifle fire stopped. The desert night, even as it began to shift and lighten towards dawn grew quiet again. On the other side of Godsey's camp, Cooper Smith had just done more hand to hand fighting in the last quarter hour than he had in the last two years. And the black haired scout was ready for more, watchful and wary as always as the fire fight began to die down. He was more or less satisfied with results so far. Eli Randolph was a few yards away to Coop's left, after a necessarily subdued but greatly relieved and happy meet-up with Coop outside the raider's camp. The young father was less than pleased to hear of Nell's escapade, but seemed largely unsurprised. Now he and his long time friend were focused on finding that youngster and Micheal Riordan.

Joaquin Aguilar strode away to Coop's right, further and further into the encampment, his fighters cautiously aligned as they searched for the Reverend and his men. Their main concern now was that some of the raiders, Godsey included might still get safe away, or make yet another attack on Los Miraboles. Then their search went on, five of the raiders surrendered, throwing their guns down and putting their hands high in the air. Three more were found dead, and another trio was located hiding in what was left of the miner's shack in the center of camp, wounded and glum.

"_El Senor Reverendo Godsey!"_ Aguilar finally called out. "My compadres and I have your camp encircled now. We have taken eight of your men and found three others dead. By my measure, that leaves you with no more than five of your men, against twenty-one of mine. That's not what even a crazy Yanqui would consider good odds. So I think it would be for the best now, if you gave up your arms and accepted a cease fire, at once. You have nothing to gain by continuing to fight us and still much to lose. Surely you see it would be best to make an end to this now."

"I see only a worthless, G-dless savage, leading yet more savages in a useless, pointless, bloody attack on a minister of the Almighty!" Godsey called back, his commanding voice furious and icy cold.

"I see only the very reason I came to this country, walking towards me, his weapons, his language and his very clothing all stolen from decent white folk! How many of my people have you murdered by this time, Joaquin Hernan Eliseo Aguilar? How many white-eyes have you counted _coup for at this point, Tzensa Kwihanai-Bavi_? How many white women and children have you turned into peons or worse in Mexican plantations, gutters and mines? How many outrages are on your head, and how much white blood covers your heathen hands?"

"What in the very…" Coop whispered to Randolph. " Eli, is that fellow Godsey, who's spouting all that nonsense?"

"It surely is, Cooper. Why d' you ask?" Eli replied.

"Because I've heard that voice somewhere before. I know I have! And it wasn't comin' from any danged pulpit in any church I was ever in. But I can't quite place … Guess we'll just have to persuade him to show his face." the scout suggested.

"That's just what Eleanor and I had in mind, Cooper." Micheal Riordan very quietly replied, walking up to join his friends, as young Nell hugged her father fiercely hello, whispered to him, and then turned her face towards the camp. "It's … its been quite a long while, Cooper. And you're … wonderful to see, old friend."

"Some days and nights, I feel much older than others, old friend." Coop grinned crookedly, suddenly very glad to see Thea's husband again. "For instance, I felt danged old when I found out …Well, I figure Miss Nell told you by now, you're a granddaddy now."

"Older, truly?" Riordan smiled. "That's odd, I seem to feel amazingly young just at the moment. But what makes you think you might know … this … Godsey?"

" 'm not certain sure, not yet, anyway." Coop admitted. "Now then, Miss Randolph, what more mischief have you and this old reprobate here got up your sleeves?"

"Just a… little surprise, for the Reverend... Coop… Mr. Cooper, I meant to say." Nell answered, ducking her head once more. "Daddy, I'm not afraid, not now that I see you're alright, and not so very angry with me."

"Oh I'll leave that part to your momma, my girl." Eli chuckled. "She won't allow you those denims or that old hat for half a year after this … adventure of yours, I'm willing to bet, just for a start. But she won't permit you to turn your hair up or your skirts down either, so be ready for that."

"Well, if that's all there is…" Nell sighed, pulling her hat off and shaking her bright hair to flow down her back in red and gold river of light."But it won't be, of course. Please, will all of you stay close by? I'm ready to do my part now. But only if I know certain sure you three are alright."

Coop felt himself about to laugh aloud, but managed only to roll his eyes. "Oh, she's a woman from Nacogdoches, alright, Eli!" the scout finally whispered.

"Oh she is that! She's my Miri, all over again and more besides!" Randolph agreed. "Micheal, were you going to give my Nell a cue of some kind sometime before noon today?"

"That I am, Eli, that I surely am." Riordan smiled. "Reverend! Reverend Godsey, sir!" Micheal then called out. "Someone else has come into camp. And she needs to see you, Reverend, right away! Reverend, its little Nell Randolph, sir. But she's said nothing about her father to me, Reverend. She said she came because she has to see you tonight."

"So you left your post, Mr. Riordan? You left your post, while we were under attack to bring that … snippet of a girl into our camp, did you?" Godsey demanded, emerging from behind the shack. "Go home, Eleanor. There's nothing and no one here for you now. Go back to your home while you still can, while it still stands. Go home."

"I can't go back there now, Anthony, my dear." Nell replied. "I can't. It's just as you said it might be. Missus Thea said I had to be banished now. She drove me out. Just as you said she might. She was so … well, I think she was very cruel and envious, Anthony. Just as you said she likely would be.

She drove me out, just as Sarah drove Hagar out with her child. So I came to you, Anthony, I came to you. Hagar couldn't go to Abraham any longer, Anthony. But I came to you, a castaway, with … with … your child … I came to you, my dearest Reverend… my dearest, dearest Anthony, here I am. I've come to you."

Godsey stared at the woman-child, blinking in astonishment, it seemed. "Eleanor, you're not being truthful now. You know you're not. You mustn't take up the sin of mendacity, child. It was not you whom I … Eleanor, you could have no child of mine… Eleanor, you could not have … You could not be bearing any child of mine…It was never you I … You know the truth! You know the truth! I instructed you to keep still and only if you obeyed my orders were you permitted … permitted to remain there while … "

"Anthony! Please! Don't say that! You know it's not so!" Nell sobbed, putting both hands up to her face for an instant before she went on. "Of course my dearest sister in G-d, Micaela was there, too. Both of us came to you that night and … Both of us love you so terribly, dearest man! But Micaela, she couldn't come with me tonight… You see… she gave you a son tonight, Anthony. She bore you a son! I hope I have your son, too. I hope I do!"

"Eleanor, you mustn't say these things! I instructed you closely, carefully and strictly to keep silence about these … matters, these things. I instructed you to understand that all would be revealed as and when G-d wills." Godsey insisted, glaring at the girl. "You mustn't reveal such matters to anyone. Not to anyone! Now I know that Micaela understood that. I know she grasped G-d's plan… and surely she has done and said as I instructed in all things… I know she fully understood her role and what she must say and do … I believed you understood as well!

But you are not … No, Eleanor, do not go on with this… There are those listening, strangers and enemies all about us here! You mustn't defy the Almighty's Will. It's wickedness to do so! You mustn't say these things where enemies and strangers can hear! They are apostates, heretics, outsiders. They are infidels, Papists and nonbelievers. They cannot begin to understand… Eleanor, you … "

"Dearest, my dearest man, please, please, don't! I am a ruined girl if you won't let me come to you now, I have … I only have you and our child… Anthony, please, dearest, don't deny us now. We were so… I was still so broken, so broken-hearted because Asher died, Asher who I would have loved, who I will love all of my life, with all of my heart, but with a girl's loving, not a woman's. But you… " Nell stared at Godsey and began to quietly cry.

"Anthony, you were so good and so gentle with me, Anthony dearest… You were so strong and so caring, and … You know I … I knew no one … no one at all before! You knew… and you were so kind and so sweet with me and then with my sister in G-d, Micaela. Sisters in G-d, that's what you said we would always be now. We would be sister-wives to our wonderful patriarch, just as Leah and Rachel were to Jacob, just as the Mormon women are to their Prophets, you said."

"Why, you little tramp! You little slut! You with your heathen thoughts and your sly little ways! How dare you accuse me?" Godsey demanded. "I said no such thing! I did no such thing! I wanted nothing from you, nothing at all! Are you truly as much of a fool as I thought? I have no wish to bed a schoolgirl! I thought you understood it was all done to make things clear to that heedless, heartless, heathenish Riordan woman! It was the Almighty's Will that she be punished for rejecting, for defying, for denying his Servant!"

"He's Gutierrez!" Coop hissed, as Godsey walked a few steps closer to the girl. "He's Antonio Gutierrez! That's how I know that snake! He was in with Santiago Quesada down in San Saba and across the border, two years ago! And between them they got rich off of raiding, selling scalps, and murdering settlers. And a very good friend of mine was just one they killed. Get away from that girl, Gutierrez! She's worth a thousand times a thousand of you and far more! I said, get away from her and I mean now! Right now! You step one fraction of an inch closer to her, you worthless excuse for a human being and you won't live long enough to regret you ever saw that girl!" the scout demanded, cocking his rifle and holding it directly on Godsey.

"Thank you, Mr. Cooper." Nell said, turning a half mischievous smile on the scout. "You came in right on cue. I was right, you are a true hero, aren't you?"

"No, Nell. I'm an ordinary man who hates the idea that any man anywhere would harm a child or a woman." Coop shook his head. "Its just never seemed to me that it could possibly be right for a grown man to use their strength, much less a danged pack of lies to harm someone half their own size. I think only a blasted coward, who won't take on someone his own size, who won't get into a fight at all if the odds are against him, does that sort of thing. And for any man to prey on children to get back at their parents… Well, that's just lower than low in my book."

"Who are you, and what foul lies are you spewing about me, sir?" Godsey/Gutierrez demanded, stepping back from Nell, looking almost as if he were glad to be distracted from the girl. "I don't know who, much less what you are talking about! You invade my encampment in the dead of night, firing your weapons, causing a ruckus, and immediately begin making inexplicable charges against a man of the cloth?"

"I'm Cooper Smith, and I'm here helping my friends Eli and Micheal. We all grew up together down in east Texas, and when I found their home here goin' up in flames I rode into help as best I could." Coop replied, glaring at the self-styled minister. "Then I heard that maybe Eli and Micheal might be in some trouble here, leaving your camp. And now I know why!"

"Gutierrez?" Joaquin Aguilar echoed, from the other side of the circle he and his men had formed around the center of Godsey's camp.

"Senor Cooper, you're saying this supposed man of G-d is Antonio Alejandro Zaccarias Gutierrez? He's one of the Mejicanos who aligned themselves with James Case, who called himself Santiago Quesada, while that madman was raiding and murdering and torturing women and taking slaves? And He did all that despite being the child of one of the first _Tejicanas_, one of the first white women to come to _Tejas _decades ago. And he did all that, despite being the son and grandson of Spanish nobles, of _hidalgos_ going back to _los Conquistadores._"

Coop nodded grimly, keeping his rifle trained on Godsey. "Only this snake in the tall grass wasn't one to ride or fight or risk his own hide … He wasn't nearly as crazy as Quesada. No, not him! He only took what Quesada carried across the border into Mexico. Whatever and whoever those mongrels brought, Gutierrez bought and sold over and over again, getting filthy rich, off of Quesada's raids! Guess he decided to get into both sides of the business, and cut out the middle man, since then!"

"I am the Reverend Anthony Alexander Zerachiel Godsey, I'll have you know! I am a minister of G-d, sir, a man of the cloth, a man of faith! I have no idea who you are or what you may be talking about. Riordan, what do you mean by bringing this girl and this … stranger into our encampment here? What are you doing, standing with them, instead of defending our camp… instead of defending me? What is the matter with you, man?"

"What is the matter with me?" Micheal echoed, shuddering and staring at Gutierrez.

"What? … That's exactly what I've been wondering for some time now. That's what everyone who loves me has been wondering too! They must have thought I'd lost my mind! I think I surely did for a while. I took you at your word, Reverend Sir. I took in all your poison draughts as my only food and drink, and all your lies as my only truths! I was lost! I was wandering and bewildered after my son Asher died. My whole family was aggrieved and shocked, and you used all our pain, all our regrets and our remorse against me and mine!

And now tonight I find that not only are you so far sunk in your lies and your madness, your tricks and traps that you can't seem to see the truth anymore, but you turned all your traps and lies and threats against two innocent, trusting girls! You turned all your warped, insane hatred and fears against my family, and harmed our children in ways I can't even bear to think of! And more than that, as nightmarish as that is, more than that I find now that you are all the loathsome, horrid things you accused part of my family of being. You've done all the vile, unspeakable things you wanted me to believe my friend Joaquin and his son had done!

I let you use me against all I love in the world! I let you turn me like a child's top, around and around and back and around again! I let you shape me into a sword in your hands! I abandoned all the best I've ever known to follow your vengeance, your pride, your greed and all your damnable lies! I believed you instead of the mother of my children, my soul's friend, my better self, the bright love of my heart! I believed you instead of my oldest, best friends in all the world.

And worse, I believed you because you claimed to be a man of G-d, a minister … My family… our family, at Los Miraboles thought we were saving your life and your Holy Mission to bring faith to the desert. But what we brought into our lives was an adder, a deadly dangerous snake as Cooper was just saying, one with a mouth full of piety and a heart full of poison! I should stomp you into the ground and cut off your head, right now, right here, the way any man would when he finds a viper has threatened his home!"

"Tanner, where are you!" Godsey/Gutierrez shouted, sidling away from Micheal Riordan, looking around the camp now, not at

his accusers. "Whelan! Welles! Benjamin! Traherne! We are betrayed! Show yourselves, the enemy's amongst us, seeking our destruction. But we can still prevail! Morrissey! North! Moray! We are under attack! Where are you, boys? We must continue to fight these savages, no matter on what terms or conditions. We must drive them from this new, open unspoiled land This is G-d's country! We must drive the evildoers, the heathens, the scum of the earth back to their warrens and their wastelands!"

"They're all gone now, Godsey, or whatever your name is."Eli Randolph answered, shaking his head. "They ran out on you. They saw this debacle was finally over and they high tailed it out of here like a lot of white tailed deer! They cut you loose, Reverend. You're on your own now. You're goin' to prison or to a gallows tree. And one or the other, those old boys, they're not coming along with you for that ride, nobody is. Nobody. Give it up."

"No! No! No!" Gutierrez screamed, looking around wildly as not even one of his raiders answered his call. Then he slipped back into what was clearly his native tongue. "_No, ninguin es no la verdad! Mi tropa ha sido y sera fiel a mi siempre. Siempre! Usted miente. Usted intenta trampearme. Pero soy el que esta con todos los trucos y trampas aqui. Soy la persona que gana siempre! Soy el! _

_Usted intenta trampearme! Usted miente. Mis amigos! Mis compadres! Mis hombres! Debemos continuar en la lucha! Debemos conducir a los salvajes hacia fuera! Debemos reclamar la tierra! Debemos probar nuestro destino manifesto aqui!" ********* _

What happened next Coop wasn't entirely sure of, later on. Everything seemed to shift and shudder and turn on the increasingly demented man in the middle of the raider's camp. Everything moved too fast. Once more Gutierrez lunged towards young Nell and tore the rifle out of her hands. The girl shifted away, rushing to her father's side. Once more Coop leveled his rifle at the self-made 'man of G-d'. But so did Eli Randolph. So did Joaquin Aguilar. So did Micheal Riordan. So, Coop thought afterwards did some of Aguilar's men. Shots were fired. Gutierrez fell face down and lay exceptionally still, his long arms and legs splayed out, as if he were still trying to escape.

Coop felt chilled and sick and suddenly all worn out. Looking around the scout saw his east Texas friends likely felt the same. Aguilar and his compadres seemed disgusted but not as shocked.

"I told him not to take even half a step towards the girl." Coop muttered to no one in particular. "Didn't I?"

"Si." Aguilar agreed. "We all heard you warn the blasted fool. He wouldn't listen."

"You did, Cooper. You gave him full, fair warning." Riordan added.

Nell Randolph clung to her father, sobbing and hiding her face against his shoulder. Eli stroked his daughter's bright hair and kept her close, soothing her as any father would.

"She's never seen anyone die … not like this." Eli finally said when Nell managed to calm down. "Not like this. But its alright now, little girl. Its alright. We're all fine and better still, we're all going on home, now."

"Home." Nell nodded. "That's going to be my favorite word from now on. Lets go home."

*********Translation:

_No, no that's not the truth! My troop has been and will be faithful to me always. You lie. You try to trick me. But I am the one with all the tricks and traps here, I am the one who always wins! I am the one! You try to trick me. You lie. My friends, my brothers, my men, we must go on fighting! We must drive the savages out! We must reclaim the land! We must prove our manifest destiny here! _


	14. Chapter 10

EPILOGUE The Hale Wagon Train, northwestern Colorado Territory, two weeks' travel west of Los Miraboles Canyon,

Chris Hale closed his journal, his ledgers and his leather folder full of letters for the evening and stood up stretching his long legs. He needed to walk the camp before trying to sleep. And the wagonmaster fully intended to find and have a quiet talk with his head scout during that walk, to find out what was keeping Cooper Smith even more close-mouthed than usual lately. It was time and past time they had this out.

Coop came back to the train with a route through Los Miraboles canyon completely planned, sketched out and written down for Hale. Other than that, the black haired Texan had next to nothing to say about his latest exploration. And when it seemed Duke Shannon might fill in any interesting details, one sharp glance from Coop slammed that door shut, too. More than that, neither young man offered Hale any reason for their silence on the subject.

So Hale had little to go on when he and the others encountered a few of the people rebuilding a battered, burned out hacienda just south of the canyon. Some were transplanted Texans. Others were originally from Mexico. And still more were Comanche, Chris had been able to learn. They lived very quietly together, it seemed, forming a tight-knit, oddly woven together family of a sort. They volunteered little information about their tiny settlement, except to say they'd applied for and were waiting word on a variance or exclusion from the new treaty's provisions.

"We're a peaceful little settlement here, Mr. Hale. We're harming nothing and no one. We're not in anyone's way. And there's nothing in or around Los Miraboles that anyone but us would place value in." One of the settlers offered. "So our hope is to remain where we've been working to make a home. It would be a shame and a waste to have to leave now. This is our home, and it's been our dream for … a number of years, a dream that hasn't come without a price."

"They rarely do, Mr. Randolph." Hale answered. "In my experience, dreams very rarely come either cheaply or freely. We have to work for them, and keep on working hard. I wish all of you the best of luck with yours."

Thinking about the soft spoken, almost wary Eli Randolph and the other people in the tiny settlement near the Los Miraboles escarpment, Chris shook his head. Something about them he automatically respected and liked, when he hadn't expected to. In fact, Hale expected to be somewhat irritated by finding another batch of stubborn people trying to put down roots where they didn't belong. But something about the Randolphs and Riordans and their Mexican and even their Comanche neighbors and friends, made the wagonmaster hope they'd be allowed to stay in the peaceable home they were trying to build. But none of that explained what was going on with Cooper Smith. Chris needed to know, for a lot of reasons, some Hale realized tonight he had yet to explain to the younger man.

After wandering through half the wagon circle, Hale found Coop wholly absorped in caring for his golden sorrel. The young Texan made no bones about the importance he placed on his mount. Any man who rode out alone as much as Coop had to have a healthy, well-taken care of horse, just to survive. But Hale understood Gambler meant far more than that to Coop. Among other things, the stallion had been a gift from his grandfather and namesake, old Nathaniel Cooper. So the graceful, good looking creature was a strong tie back to east Texas, and his younger days there.

That being the case, Chris wasn't surprised when he had to 'harrumph' three times to get even the scout's partial attention away from the work of cleaning one of Gambler's hooves.

"Oh, h'llo Chris. Did y' want to see me?" Coop finally asked, looking up for a moment, then going back to his chore.

"Yes, as a matter of fact. I've been trying have a conversation with you for most of a fortnight now." the wagonmaster declared.

"But for some reason that hasn't happened. It's happening tonight, Coop. And I mean, right now."

"Well, that's alright. I can talk and do this. What did you want to tell me?" Coop asked, without looking up, his whole manner and tone of voice as innocent as a schoolboy's.

"Oh, no my friend, we're not starting out that way." Chris shook his head. "No this conversation is about what you're going to tell me. You're going to go right ahead taking care of your horse as long as you please. But you're going to talk to me about Los Miraboles, the people, the trouble and the settlement there. You're going to tell me what happened there that's had you as closed off and shut down as if someone dropped you into solitary confinement for the past two weeks. Starting now, Coop."

Coop looked up, frowning and Chris thought, shuddering a little at the image the wagonmaster deliberately used. Then the scout's frown deepened and his blue sky eyes turned stormy. "Well, well, alright. Well, alright! But first I want to know something myself! What did that long legged, yellow haired blabbermouth Shannon tell you, or Charlie, Barnaby or Bill? What did he shoot his mouth off about, Chris? Cause whatever it was, I have a bone to pick with him!"

"Duke told me absolutely nothing, my friend. He's said nothing to anyone at all. And believe me, Wooster has tried every trick he knows to find this out. Seems that long legged blabbermouth made you a promise to keep quiet. That's all he would tell even me. And that's fine with me as insofar as the rest of the crew is concerned. They've got enough to talk about most of the time. But you work for me, Coop. And we're friends., and you're my godson, for goodness sake! So you're just going to have to let me in on what's wrong."

"What if I just tell you its got nothing, just nothing to do with my job, or our friendship, or you're standin' up for me when I got baptized?" Coop asked, still frowning.

"That won't work, Coop. I can't and I won't accept that." Chris answered bluntly.

"And just why is that, Mr. Wagonmaster, Sir? Or don't I have the right to know why you won't take no for an answer?" Coop stalled, making Hale even more certain this talk was needed.

"Well the answer to that is simple at least. Two words: Flint McCullough." Chris replied.

"McCullough?" Coop echoed. "Chris, I don't even know the fellow. I never met him. So what does someone who's not here anymore, whose job I got when he lit out from this train, and who I wouldn't know from Adam if I ran across him have to do with whatever's botherin' you about me?"

"And if I answer your questions, are you going to oblige me by answering mine?" Hale prodded. "Are you working that deal with me, as our mutual friend Jemmy Singer would put it?"

Coop finished cleaning Gambler's right foreleg's hoof and gave the sorrel some apple slices before he looked at Chris again. The Texan's blue eyes were narrowed, his forehead furrowed, and his mouth a taut line for the next minute, as if he were considering a horse trade with the wagonmaster.

"I never should've let you get together with my cousin Jemmy." Coop finally sighed. "I can see that now. He's got a big mouth too, for a Methodist-turned-Quaker-doctor."

"You didn't have much say in the matter at the time I met your cousin from Raleigh, two years back, my friend. As a matter of fact, you were profoundly unconscious, with a lot of broken bones and a seriously high fever, and otherwise in no condition to protest, as I recall. So stop trying to change the subject, Coop, and answer my question. Will you tell me what I want to know, or won't you?"Chris asked his head scout.

"Yep." Coop finally answered. "But you answer mine first. What in the foggy blue morning has Flint McCullough got to do with whatever you think you need to know about … Los Miraboles and what went on back there?"

"He was even more reluctant to talk to me than you've been lately, that's what." Hale replied. "I tried everything I knew and he wasn't interested in talking about anything his job didn't call for. And he was … he'd already started to hate that job, or so I heard later. He had no use for newcomers, for change in general, or for anything resembling a possible friendship between us.

I was new here. I was a beat-up, nearly used-up former wagonmaster. I wasn't Seth Adams. I don't enjoy the kind of shouting matches that always seemed to get 'the Major's' blood up and running. And so I was pretty much an interloper, even a misfit here. I'd known Seth Adams for thirty years and more by the time he passed on, but none of his crew here. And despite all his protests, protests I only heard about afterwards, I had and I still have the strong impression that Mr. McCullough thought he should have taken over for 'the Major'.

So that's my answer. I have no intention of letting that kind of distance, that kind of disconnect happen between you and me, Coop. For one thing, I've known you since you were …not quite two months old. I knew your parents for more than half our lifetimes. And for another you've never struck me as the sort of man who wants walls a mile thick between him and the rest of the world. You might feel the need of them, sometimes, everyone does, but not for any great length of time. It's just not in your nature to hunker down and … "

"…hide behind the nearest earthworks?" Coop finished glumly, seeming to Chris to be intently examining his thumbnails. "No. No, it isn't. But then it's not in my nature to shoot a man down, no matter what he's done or what he might do either. And that's just what I did, Chris. I killed a man back at Los Miraboles. And it may be that he needed killin'… " Coop shook his head, but still didn't look at the wagonmaster.

"But I don't … I didn't … I dunno, maybe I did want to kill him. But he should've gone to trial. He should've gone to jail or …maybe a gallows. It wasn't supposed to be up to me, what happened to him. But …he hurt those people back there, real bad. And some of them are friends of mine… Friends from Nacogdoches, from when I was growin' up there."

"So you were defending them from this man?" Chris asked.

"Well, that's what I keep tellin' myself now." Coop nodded. "I just can't get it to sink in. I just can't seem to convince m'self that that's what really happened."

"Well, why don't you try telling me the rest of the story. Maybe together we can get it clearer for you?" Hale offered, relieved to have Coop opening up again, and saddened at the same time for the younger man.

"One minute I thought Thea had died in that place, Chris. And the next she was standing not two yards away, holding a newborn baby who it turns out, is her own little grandson. Her grandson!" Coop exclaimed as he wound up telling Chris the story.

"Then Nell Randolph went missing and we took off for the raider's camp, to find her and her father and Micheal… And everything started moving so fast from that point on that my head was ready to spin right off my shoulders. And finally out from behind that old miner's shack there… "

"Came a man who was part and parcel of the raids and murders down around San Saba?" Chris reiterated. "Including the murder of your friend Starbuck."

Coop shook his head again. "I was standing there, watching and listening, almost like I was at a playhouse somewhere. Maybe too much happened too close together. Or maybe I just flew off the handle when Gutierrez talked about Thea… that way. I wanted to stuff those words back down his throat, Chris…That much I'm sure of. But …" Coop hesitated for a moment and then turned to look right at the wagonmaster.

"…since then, I can't help remembering that I also wanted to knock Mickey Riordan flat for runnin' after the Reverend and leavin' Thea behind the way he did. But I haven't got the right to judge Mickey, either, do I? I never lost a son. But… when I first saw Thea there… tired and worried and worn out, with soot all across her forehead and down her skirt… All I could think was she looked even more wonderful than I'd remembered. All I could think was Thea's alive, not dead! And she's so amazingly beautiful and I could just wrap her up in my arms for about a century or two… So, what makes me any better than any other man who ever saw her and … "

"… fell in love with a beautiful, fine, brave woman?" Chris finished for his friend. "Only one thing, only this: You would never in a million years act on the way you felt for that instant. Never, no matter who she was married to. And I know that, even if you don't. But I think you do know that much about yourself, Coop. You know you're Beth and Danny's son, don't you? You're old Nathaniel Cooper's and Jacob Smith's grandson, right?"

"So I know they'd all reach down from Glory with a big ol' hickory switch, if I ever stepped one inch in that direction. Is that what you're saying, Chris? Cause I'd have to agree with you on that one." Coop answered with a half grin stretching across his face.

"Somehow I just can't imagine Danny Smith taking a hickory switch to anyone, his own first-born son included." Hale replied. "No, he'd just give you one of those long, sad, very disappointed looks he was so good at. And that would be all that was required. Or if he did or said anything at all it would be something like…"

"I … I …just wish… Cooper, I just wish you wouldn't… I just wish you'd consider things for… consider things for a little while before you take a step or make a move or say a word you can't un-say, or un-make ever, not ever at all." Coop drawled, giving a pitch perfect rendering of his father's voice and manner.

"Sounds about right." Chris grinned.

"Mr. Chris! Mr. Chris!" Barnaby West shouted, rushing up to the wagonmaster. "Oh, here you are! Oh, hi, Coop. Mr. Chris, Missus Arendsen she says she needs your help right away over at the March wagon. I guess maybe Missus March is about …"

"Ready to have that baby." Chris nodded, standing up. Then he turned back to his head scout. "All clear now?" the wagonmaster asked.

"All clear now. Thanks, Chris." Coop replied. "Barney, Gambler needs some exercise. Why don't you get on Wanderer and come up the trail a ways with me, while Chris gets back to work?"

"Right now? Well, sure, sure, Coop. I'd be glad to ride with you." Barney agreed. "In fact, I was gonna ask if you needed someone to give Gambler some exercise the other day but …"

"Then who'd be riding that touchy blue roan of yours?" Coop chuckled. "Seems like he won't stand still for any other rider."

"Well, he won't. Jemmy … your cousin from Raleigh, he taught me a couple ways to keep horse thieves from taking your mount, when he was with the train, last year." Barney nodded. "So my Wanderer, he's just about a one-man horse now, like Jemmy's big grey gelding."

"Jemmy taught…" Coop rolled his eyes. "And just who do you think taught him how to do that? I think I should write my cousin from Raleigh and set him straight on a couple of questions. He'll want to hear about our friends from Nacogdoches, anyway, how they're doing. But in the meantime, Barney…"

"Let's ride." Barney said, grinning widely to see Coop's sense of humor returning.

ANOTHER BEGINNING


End file.
